The purchase gives Grupo Carso a stake in the Zama offshore oil field in the Gulf of Mexico. It's considered the largest oil reserves discovery in the last 20 years. (Zachary Theodore/Unsplash)
Carlos Slim’s Grupo Carso is set to acquire a stake in a large Gulf of Mexico oil field after reaching an agreement with the United States company Talos Energy to buy just under half of its Mexican subsidiary.
Talos announced Thursday that Grupo Carso subsidiary Zamajal had agree to acquire a 49.9% interest in Talos México, which holds a 17.4% stake in the Zama oil field, located off the coast of Tabasco.
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, seen here last month with his wife Mercedes Sánchez-Navarro, owns Grupo Carso.
The purchase price is US $124.75 million, which Talos noted implies a minimum valuation of approximately $250 million for its 17.4% stake in Zama, which is believed to hold some 700 million barrels of oil.
“The transaction is expected to close within the third quarter of 2023, … subject to approval by Mexico’s Federal Economic Competition Commission,” Talos said.
The Houston-based company said that $74.85 million will be paid at closing and that the remaining $49.9 million will be due at first production of oil from Zama, which isn’t expected to occur before 2026.
“We are thrilled to partner with Grupo Carso. Our relationship dates back to the 2015 offshore [oil field] lease sales in Mexico. As we accelerate recent momentum and advance Zama toward FID [final investment decision] and first production, we are confident that Carso is the right partner at the right time,” said Talos president and CEO Timothy S. Duncan.
The oil reserves are located off the coast of Tabasco, not far from the Olmec (Dos Bocas) Refinery being built by the Mexican government. (Talos Energy)
“Carso’s investment is a testament to the economic potential of Zama, and the joint venture will also benefit from Carso’s critical presence in Mexico and global commercial experience. We are excited about this broad partnership in Mexico,” he said.
A consortium led by Talos discovered Zama off the coast of Tabasco, in 2017. In 2021, the federal Energy Ministry (SENER) awarded control of the field to Pemex as some of the project spills over on to acreage owned by the state oil company.
Talos submitted notices of dispute to the federal government over SENER’s decision, but Pemex ultimately retained control of Zama with a 50.4% stake.
However, the two companies reached an agreement in March that will allow Talos and its partners to participate in operational decisions. Germany’s Wintershall DEA has a 19.8% stake in the field and the United Kingdom company Harbour Energy has a 12.4% interest.
Talos noted in its statement that a development plan for Zama was submitted to Mexico’s National Hydrocarbons Commission in March for formal approval.
“Additionally, an Integrated Project Team comprised of individuals from all four Zama Unit Holders was established to manage the development and operation of Zama going forward,” the company said.
“Talos will co-lead the planning, drilling, construction, and completion of all Zama wells as well as the planning, execution, and delivery of Zama’s offshore infrastructure.”
Grupo Carso, which already has energy sector interests, said in a statement that it would “actively participate with Talos in order to obtain the most efficient execution of the project along with Pemex and the other members of the consortium.”
The "#EsClaudia" ("It's Claudia") slogan has been appearing around the country in support of the aspiring candidate. (Graciela López Herrera / Cuartoscuro.com)
The results of a new poll indicate that it’s quite likely that Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum will be sworn in as Mexico’s first female president on Oct. 1, 2024.
A poll conducted by the Reforma newspaper found that Morena is easily the most popular political party in Mexico, and that Sheinbaum is the favored presidential candidate for the party founded by President López Obrador.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum was thought to be AMLO’s favorite by 36% of respondents in the survey, ahead of Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard (26%). (Photo: Edgar Negrete Lira/Cuartoscuro)
Reforma surveyed 1,000 adults earlier this month and published the results of its poll on Friday, just over a year before Mexicans go to the polls to elect a new president and renew both houses of federal Congress.
One question the newspaper put to poll respondents was, “Which party would you vote for if the presidential election was held today?”
Excluding those who didn’t indicate a preference, 49% of respondents nominated Morena, compared to just 20% who opted for the conservative National Action Party (PAN), the second most popular choice.
Combined support for Morena and its allies, the Labor Party (PT) and the Ecological Green Party of Mexico (PVEM), was 55%, while the Va por México alliance, made up of the PAN, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), was 16 points behind, with 39% of those polled saying they would vote for one of those three parties.
Leaders of the Va por México parties from left to right: PRD, Jesús Zambrano, PAN, Marko Cortés and PRI, Alejandro “Alito” Moreno. (Twitter)
The Va Por México parties announced in January that they would field a common presidential candidate at the June 2, 2024 election, but there is currently little clarity about who that will be.
On the Morena-PT-PVEM side, there are four main contenders for the nomination, and one fringe one – PT Deputy José Gerardo Rodolfo Fernández Noroña.
Almost one-third of poll respondents – 31% – said that Sheinbaum was their preferred Morena candidate, while 26% nominated Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard.
Interior Minister Adán Augusto López Hernández and Senator Ricardo Monreal attracted support of just 6% and 5%, respectively, while 30% of those polled said they didn’t know who their preferred Morena candidate was.
President López Obrador, center, flanked by the four main contenders for the party’s nomination in 2024, seen from left to right: Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, Interior Minister Adán Augusto López, Senate Majority Leader Ricardo Monreal and Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum. (Presidencia)
Sheinbaum, a physicist and engineer who was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, declared late last year that she is ready to take on the nation’s top job.
Thirty-six percent of poll respondents believe that the mayor is López Obrador’s favorite Morena aspirant, compared to just 19% who think AMLO prefers Ebrard. López Hernández is close to the president, and a fellow tabasqueño (Tabasco native), but only 6% of those polled believe he is the president’s número uno choice.
Morena has said it will survey its members to determine who its candidate will be, but less than half of those polled – 49% – indicated that they believed that is the way the party will ultimately decide on its flag bearer. While 13% said they didn’t know how Morena will choose its candidate, a not insignificant 38% expressed the view that López Obrador will have the final say. AMLO himself has asserted that will not be the case.
None of the potential Va por México candidates received double-digit support among those polled by Reforma.
PAN Deputy Santiago Creel, a former interior minister, was the preferred PAN-PRI-PRD candidate of 6% of respondents, while PAN Senator Lilly Téllez, a Morena defector, attracted the same level of support.
PAN leader Marko Cortés with Senator Lilly Téllez, who in the Reforma poll, got 6% of respondents’ support. (Lilly Téllez/Twitter)
Ricardo Anaya, a former deputy and PAN national presented who contested the 2018 election, was favored by 5% of those polled, while PRI Senator Beatriz Paredes was the top choice of the same percentage of respondents.
Almost six in 10 people – 59% – said they didn’t know who their preferred opposition candidate was, a situation that is perhaps reflective of the current lack of clarity about who will actually seek the PAN-PRI-PRD candidacy.
Another opposition party, Citizens Movement (MC), has indicated that it will also field a candidate at next year’s presidential election. Monterrey Mayor Luis Donaldo Colosio Riojas, son of murdered PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, was the preferred MC candidate of 30% of respondents, while Nuevo León Governor Samuel García and Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro were nominated by 13% and 6% of those polled, respectively.
Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro (left) and Nuevo León Governor Samuel García, both from the Citizens Movement (MC) party, have been considered potential presidential candidates for 2024. (Government of Jalisco)
Half of the 1,000 respondents didn’t cite a preferred candidate for the MC, which backed Anaya in 2018 and López Obrador in 2012.
Reforma also set up nine contests between potential candidates, and asked respondents to cast mock ballots. Sheinbaum easily won the three in which she was included, while Ebrard and López Obrador Hernández also came out on top in the three in which they competed, albeit by narrower margins.
The key takeaway is that Morena appears likely to win the presidency next year, regardless of the candidate the party ends up choosing.
López Obrador, who trounced his opponents at the 2018 election by winning over 53% of the vote, will hand over the presidential sash to his successor four months after next year’s election. Sheinbaum, at this stage, looks to be the most likely recipient.
The medications were seized by regulator Cofepris, after concerns about the manufacturing process. (Nastya Hulhiier/Unsplash)
Mexico’s health regulator has authorized the release of 653,000 boxes of medication for mental health disorders, which authorities have held back ever since an inspection In November at the labs where they were made detected multiple irregularities in the production process.
The Federal Commission for the Protection Against Health Risks (Cofepris) said the 10.4 million doses of imipramine, lorazepam, lozam and talpramin were released, partly to meet a shortage of psychiatric medication. The doses are only authorized for sale on the domestic market, Cofepris said.
The regulator has deemed the drugs safe for use in the domestic market, and has released them to combat a severe shortage in psychiatric medication. (Wikimedia)
The medications were all produced by Psicofarma, Mexico’s largest supplier of psychiatric drugs.
In November 2022, a Cofepris inspection of the Psicofarma laboratories found several failures in the company’s control of psychoactive substances, including cross-contamination and unsterile packaging procedures.
As a result, activity at two Psicofarma laboratories were suspended and millions of boxes of medication were seized for technical analysis, to ensure they were safe for human consumption.
This is the fourth batch of government-seized medications to be released. Nearly 1.5 million boxes of clonazepam, methylphenidate, lithium and methylphenidate were released on May 12, followed by more than7 million boxes of clonazepam and methylphenidate, before a further shipment of more than a million amitriptyline, clozapine, alprazolam, zolpidem and diazepam.
The list of medicines made by the company Psicofarma that Cofepris has recently re-released to the public after being seized by the regulatory agency. The first column refers to the order in which the medicines were released. The third column refers to the total number of boxes released in each category. (Cofepris)
In total, nearly 10.5 million boxes of seized medication have now been authorized for the national market. Cofepris said in its statement that Psicofarma assumes responsibility for any marketing of the medicines in question..
The Psicofarma debacle has only compounded existing issues in Mexico’s pharmaceutical supply. Between the first two months of 2022 and the same period of 2023, production of nervous system medicines dropped 17%. Cancer drugs production dropped 12.3%, and rheumatology drugs 21.5%.
Experts say the shortages are due partly to delays in Cofepris’ licensing and approval of imported precursors and finished products.
“If there are delays at every stage… it will push back the ability to have a product both in the public and the private sector, and this has affected all laboratories,” Enrique Martínez, general director of the pharmaceutical consulting firm INEFAM,told the newspaper El Financiero.
Mental health disorders saw a sharp rise due to the COVID-19 pandemic, compounding already problematic access issues. (Saúl López/Cuartoscuro)
Drugs that are in particularly short supply in Mexico include ADHD medication Tradea; antidepressants Adepsique and Anapsique; anxiety medication Kriadex; opioid Methadone; and schizophrenia drugs Clopsine and Clozapine, among others.
The shortages have caused severe issues for patients, many of whom have found themselves unable to access essential medications. To make matters worse, the crisis has coincided with a doubling in demand for psychiatric drugs, as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic aggravated many mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety.
Manypatients reported consequences such as manic episodes, nausea or suicidal thoughts from being forced to stop their regular medication, which has driven some to look for relief on the black market.
“They are putting our lives at risk; they don’t take us seriously,” one woman with bipolar disorder, who gave her name as Melisa, told El País.
Cofepris insists that it is working to resolve the crisis, including by supporting Psicofarma in complying with regulations and by authorizing new permits to import precursors for psychiatric drugs.
“Cofepris is … building a regulatory path to promote advances in access to psychiatric care medications, [by] providing transparent support to the company [so it can] present the required documentation and tests, [and by] addressing the high-priority keys to supply to the public and private sectors.” the regulator said in a statement.
The bottles will be compacted and dispatched to the PetStar recycling plant in Toluca, México state, where they will be transformed into food-grade resin for packaging. (Marina del Pilar/Instagram)
A new plastic collection center in Tijuana claims to champion sustainability in Mexico, but activists argue that plastic recycling is a more complicated issue than the industry makes it seem.
Corporación del Fuerte and PetStar, both part of the Mexican Coca-Cola Industry (IMCC), inaugurated the collection center on May 16. They also announced an investment of 97 million pesos (US $5.43 million) to expand plastic collection points in the Baja California cities of Ensenada and Mexicali, aiming to collect more than 543 million polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles by the end of 2023.
Mexico has the highest level of plastics recycling in the Americas but is looking to recycle more, thanks in part to the involvement of Coca-Cola.(Marc Newberry/Unsplash)
The bottles will be compacted and dispatched to the PetStar recycling plant in Toluca, México state, where they will be transformed into food-grade resin for packaging.
“[The plant] is the perfect example of the virtuous circle, capable of generating a spiral of benefits in our community,” said the Governor of Baja California, Marina del Pilar Ávila, during her speech at the inauguration.
“A collection plant means not only more job creation, but we are also talking about environmental and social well-being, about looking at solutions together to build a world without waste.”
Ávila said that Baja California leads the way in plastic recycling in Mexico, recovering around 67% of PET bottles, compared to a national average of 60%. PetStar says it has recycled 3.5 billion PET bottles in 2022, generating thousands of jobs for waste pickers and producers of recycled materials.
Bottles from the Baja California site will be sent to Toluca, where they will be recycled. (Petstar)
At the national level, Mexico has the highest level of plastics recycling in the Americas. The National Association of Plastic Industries (ANIPAC) counts 398 companies engaged in plastics recycling in Mexico, and the country recycled 1,682,913 tonnes of materials in 2022.
“Twenty years ago, when ECOCE was created, 8% of PET containers were recovered for recycling,” Jaime Torres Fidalgo, communications director of ECOCE — a nonprofit founded by a group of beverage industry entrepreneurs that conducts recycling campaigns in schools — told the newspaper El Economista.
“Today, the recovery percentage is 59%… This places us as leaders throughout the American continent, above Brazil, the United States and Canada in PET recovery.”
However, critics argue the type of recycling used in Mexico is less sustainable than claimed, involving poorly-regulated processes of washing and melting plastics that use large amounts of water and energy.
Between 2015 and 2021, Mexico imported plastic waste valued at a total of US $225 million. Cities on the pie chart represent customs locations where waste crossed the border into Mexico, not necessarily that the cities listed were the waste’s point of generation.
Furthermore, Marisa Jacot of the activist group Fronteras Comunes (Common Borders) argues that what large companies are promoting in Tijuana is “plastic garbage colonialism” that has turned Mexico into one of the main recipients of the United States’ single-use plastic waste.
In the three years following 2018, when China banned imports of single-use plastic waste, garbage imports to Mexico increased by 121%, from 79,291 tonnes to 175,586 tonnes, says Fronteras Comunes.
Tijuana became a key arrival point for this waste, receiving 140,000 tonnes of plastic garbage alone between 2015 and 2021, or 27% of the total shipped from the United States in that period.
Although this change has generated jobs in the recycling industry, it has likely also contributed to the city’s high levels of air pollution.
“The industry’s claim that their work is recycling is a fallacy, because incineration is not recycling, and the plastic recycling there… does not reach even 20% of the total plastic that is lying around,” Jacot told the newspaper Zeta Tijuana.
A truly sustainable solution to plastic garbage, she argued, would involve restricting production and companies taking responsibility for their own waste rather than passing the burden on to countries with weaker environmental regulations.
Friends and family came together to sing and celebrate the late Discos Corasón founder Eduardo Llerenas at his family home in Mexico City. (Photos by Anna Bruce)
On April 29, we celebrated the life and work of ethnomusicologist Eduardo Llerenas, who died last September, with a beautiful tribute at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Friends and family, as well as musicians gave moving speeches and performances in Eduardo’s memory.
A man who dedicated his life to the preservation and dissemination of musical heritage, he is described by Mexico’s Culture Ministry as a promoter and defender of traditional music.
Yuriria Contreras of Mexico’s public radio station XEB led the tribute to Eduardo Llerenas. Here she introduces Mexican-Senegalese musicographer Ery Camara, who with Llerenas recorded several musicians from Mali and Senegal in Mexico.
Llerenas began to record Mexican music in the 1970s with engineer Enrique Ramírez de Arellano under the label Música Tradicional. Their recordings of the huapango, huasteco son and istmeño son music became the highlight of a series called “Antología del Son Mexicano.”
This work caught the attention of journalist and fellow ethnomusicologist Mary Farquharson, and through a shared love of music, Llerenas and Farquharson became a couple and married.
I am lucky to have known Mary and Eduardo for most of my life. When I moved to Mexico, they welcomed me into their home and included me in amazing experiences with musicians from Mexico and other parts of the world.
I know this is a story I share with many others, as Eduardo and Mary are renowned for their generosity and hospitality. This was evident at the tribute and following celebrations, where the spirit of their musical life together shone brightly.
Lllerenas was also fascinated by the roots of Latin American music in Africa.
“Those who knew Eduardo Llerenas have one, 10 or 100 stories to tell,” the couple’s friend Hermann Bellinghausen said, “but at the time of his final passing, I believe that the best way to remember him is by listening to the collection of music he made during his half-century as a hunter and fisherman of sounds.”
Together, the couple created the label Discos Corasón, gathering over 15,000 songs and producing more than 90 albums. Their collection of recordings preserves generations of traditional music and is the product of tireless tours through different parts of Mexico. Considered an important legacy of traditional Mexican music the Discos Corasón collection was included in 2016 in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program.
Research also led Eduardo and Mary to travel through Belize, Guatemala, the Caribbean and West Africa, as well as Eastern Europe.
“At Discos Corasón, we never think about success when we record an artist,” Llerenas wrote in the alternative media outlet Desinformémonos. “Rather, we listen to many artists from different genres — Mexican, Cuban and beyond — and when we find music that surprises us with its beauty, its technique, its spirit, its vitality, we suggest recording its creators in order to share this fascination.”
Marcos Hernández of the trio Los Camperos de Valle signs an original vinyl recording his band made with Llerenas in 1988.
Prior to meeting Eduardo, Mary had cofounded the British record label World Circuit with trumpeter Nick Gold, who in 1996 proposed a project to the couple that would change their history and that of Discos Corasón: to record a group of musicians in Santiago de Cuba.
It was the beginning of the legendary album “Buena Vista Social Club.”
In his Desinformemonos column, Llerenas captured moments in the creation of this iconic record, including one night when Eduardo was with Gold and guitarist Juan de Marcos González of the Cuban group Sierra Maestra, a passionate defender of the traditional son and bolero.
Eduardo described how “Juan de Marcos didn’t let go of Nick Gold throughout the night, determined to convince him to make a tribute album to the old soneros and bolero singers who still lived — some of them somewhat forgotten — on the island.”
Singer, dancer and percussionist Violeta Romero from the all-woman son jarocho band Caña Dulce Caña Brava, plays the quijada, made from the jawbone of a mule.
According to Llerenas, Gold wanted to reproduce the sound of Eastern Cuba — the son, bolero and guaracha — with musicians like Eliades Ochoa, whom he knew from previous Discos Corasón recordings. Eduardo had hoped to visit Mali and incorporate musicians who could speak to the roots of Afro-Cuban music in the recording. Unfortunately, visa delays prevented this from happening.
“In the end,” Eduardo wrote, “the album, called ‘Buena Vista Social Club,’ was made ‘only’ with musicians born and raised in Santiago, plus some Havanans such as Omara Portuondo, Cachaito López, Guajiro Mirabal, Miguel Angá Díaz and others, achieving a combination of the sounds of Havana and Eastern Cuba, which is one of the indisputable qualities of this record.”
“‘Buena Vista Social Club’ was recorded live in three days in downtown Havana… with an analog console,” Llerenas remembered, achieving “a vintage sound naturally, without forcing or pretending.”
Despite the success of this choice, old machinery led to technical issues. Fortunately, though, these challenges gave Eduardo and the record’s other producers more time with the musicians, who shared their stories and broader repertoires. Songs from these repertoires eventually made their way onto the final record.
Marcos Hernández, left, is a legendary son huasteco singer whom Eduardo first recorded in 1971, when the singer was only 17. Hernández traveled to CDMX with two of his sons to perform at the tribute.
Getting deeper into music from Cuba and parts of Mexico directs the gaze to Africa. The musical traditions of the Americas were not formed in a void, and the work of Llerenas and Discos Corasón explores some of their African ties.
“The rise of Cuban music,” Eduardo wrote, “allowed us to go to Mali to record the griot singer Kasse Mady Diabete in his hometown of Kela. In that way, we fulfilled our dream of getting to learn in person about the deep roots of so much of the Latin American music we’ve recorded.”
Antonio Garcia de León remembers meeting Llerenas in the 1970s, describing him “with a heavy tape recorder on his shoulder to make his passionate field recordings in rural Mexico at the time, ending up years later in Mali, Senegal and Cuba.”
Garcia de Leon describes how “world music is all mixed music and products of different fusions distributed over time.” Therefore it is “necessary to have a historical vision, open to these complexities… a great musical archive — that of Discos Corasón.”
Discos Corasón has preserved over 15,000 songs and produced more than 90 albums.
In 2010, World Circuit and Discos Corasón released “AfroCubism” in Mexico. Eliades Ochoa sang alongside Kasse Mady with several other Malian musicians who would have contributed to Buena Vista Social Club if visas had gone through in 1996.
Discos Corasón has continued to work with musicians from Mali, including the stunning Fatoumata Diawara, whom they invited to take part in the 2015 Centro Histórico Festival in Mexico City. This festival was the first time I had the honor of taking pictures on behalf of Discos Corasón, and it was eye-opening to get a glimpse behind the curtain of the incredible work brought together by Eduardo and Mary.
Later, a personal highlight was traveling with Discos Corasón to the Afro-Mexican town of Santiago Llano Grande la Banda, in the Costa Chica region of Oaxaca. There we stayed with the musician and teacher Chogo Prudente. Prudente actively supports his community by making music a key component in education, positively motivating young people in the community.
This trip took place during the lead-up to releasing “Como un Lunar — Boleros de la Costa Chica,” a beautiful anthology compiled for the Cervantino festival, celebrating the songwriter and composer Álvaro Carrillo, a Costa Chica native. In 2021, the Culture Ministry described the album that shows “that the region’s reputation for violence and marginalization is only one part of its reality and that the bolero created and performed by its musicians enjoys a vitality and relevance unmatched in other parts of the country.”
Homenaje ''Para Ti, Llerenas'', Eduardo Llerenas y Cuba.
You can see more photos of Eduardo Llerenas over the years in this video from Discos Corasón.
This speaks to the ability of music to transform and elevate, something that is clear as you step into the world of Discos Corasón.
“Llerenas’s work connected communities, creating an audience eager for that lively traditional music,” ethnomusicologist Bruno Bartra writes,
Although Llerena’s style of research and recording did not always fall within academic guidelines, says Bartra, “His writings and recordings are now required references for musicologists studying the regions through which he passed with his recording equipment.”
Bartra’s words reflect the weekend of celebrations for Eduardo, which were presented as “Para Ti, Llerenas,” a weekend that wove together musical presentations between the academic echelons of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, public dancing in the cultural center of Coyoacán and intimate performances in the garden of Eduardo and Mary’s home.
During the tribute, Gold described Llerenas as an innovative man with a sharp ear for talented musicians — a man with serious focus, yet able to move freely between the matter at hand, a joke and a dance.
This certainly rings true to the friend I remember. However, the overwhelming sentiment throughout the weekend was that of a spirit still with us, ever present in the music shared by Discos Corasón played by his family, friends and music lovers around the world.
Anna Bruce is an award-winning British photojournalist based in Oaxaca, Mexico. Just some of the media outlets she has worked with include Vice, The Financial Times, Time Out, Huffington Post, The Times of London, the BBC and Sony TV. Find out more about her work at her website or visit her on social media on Instagram or on Facebook.
The Chamber of Deputies approved on Wednesday, but still needs to review individual articles of the proposed constitutional reform. (Cámara de Diputados)
In June 2024, Mexicans will elect not only a new president, but nine new governors, 128 new senators and 500 new deputies to the national Congress, as well as many local positions (mayors, local congressional districts).
Candidates for president will be put forward by political parties registered with the National Electoral Institute (INE), and some others will join the race as independent candidates, who by the way, are a relatively new factor in elections: a 2014 electoral reform allowed candidates to run without party affiliation if they obtain signatures of support from at least 1% of registered voters in at least 17 federal entities.
From left, Marko Cortés (PAN), Alejandro Moreno (PRI) and Jesús Zambrano (PRD) represent their respective parties at a joint press conference announcing their parties’ coalition for 2024. (PRI/Facebook)
Three opposition parties (PAN, PRI, PRD) to the ruling Morena party have announced they will field a common candidate as a coalition (Va por México) in 2024. The politicians vying for the Morena candidacy include Claudia Sheinbaum, Marcelo Ebrard, Adán Augusto López and Ricardo Monreal.
Today’s edition of Mexico in Numbers will focus on the basics of the country’s multiparty political system and address the most common questions regarding parties and their representation nationwide.
How many political parties are there?
Mexico has seven national political parties recognized by the INE. Only the political parties registered with the INE can compete in federal elections.
As the highest electoral authority in the country, the INE, an autonomous body, is responsible for organizing federal elections. It also helps states coordinate local elections and issues voter ID cards to Mexican citizens, which are also commonly used as a primary form of identification.
Mexico’s seven registered political parties are listed below:
PAN: Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party)
PRI: Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party)
PRD: Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Democratic Revolutionary Party)
PT: Partido del Trabajo (Labor Party)
PVEM: Partido Verde Ecologista de México (Ecological Green Party of Mexico)
MC: Movimiento Ciudadano (Citizens Movement)
Morena: Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (National Regeneration Movement)
Morena has been the ruling party since the last presidential election in 2018.
The number of political parties does change, as some political parties disappear if they lose too many members, and new ones are created. In the last five years, five political parties have lost their registration for lack of compliance with the minimum number of registered members in an election.
How many affiliated voters are there in each party?
To keep their registration, political parties must maintain the minimum required number of registered members:
3,000 in at least 20 federal entities (i.e. states) or 300 in at least 200 single-member electoral districts, and
At least 0.26% of the Federal Electoral Register used in the immediately preceding federal election (this was 233,945 voters in 2020)
The number of registered members per political party (by gender) in 2020 is shown below:
Political Party
Total
Men
Women
PAN
252,140
121,126
131,014
PRI
2,065,161
735,957
1,329,204
PRD
1,242,410
426,065
816,345
PT
448,492
171,573
276,919
PVEM
660,874
241,406
419,468
MC
381,735
154,569
227,166
Morena
466,931
219,581
247,350
How many governorships does each party hold?
In 2022, six states held gubernatorial elections. The results show that only five of the seven political parties in Mexico hold one or more governorships in the country.
After the 2022 elections, Morena holds the greatest number of governorships in Mexico, with its members in the top post of 21 out of 32 federal entities. It is followed by the PAN with five states, the PRI with three states, MC with two states and the PVEM with one. Governor Cuauhtémoc Blanco of Morelos ran with the Social Encounter Party (PES), but since the party lost its registration after the 2018 elections, he is now representing Morena.
Morena governs the majority of states (dark red and pink), followed by the PAN (blue), PRI (dark green), Movimiento Ciudadano (orange), the PVEM (light green) and PES (purple). (Wikimedia Commons)
On June 4, voters in México state and Coahuila will choose governors. Both are governed by the PRI, which has ruled the two states without interruption since the first half of the 20th century.
How is the national legislature divided by party representation?
Mexico’s Congress has an upper house (Senate) and lower house (Chamber of Deputies). Currently, control of the Senate is mostly divided among four political parties. Morena holds the majority of representation with 60 senators, followed by the PAN with 20, the PRI with 13 and MC with 12.
The rest is divided among the PT (6), PVEM (6) and the PRD (3). Although the PES lost its registration in 2018, it still holds three seats in the Senate. Four seats are also held by the Grupo Parlamentario Plural (Plural Parliamentary Group, GPP), a voting bloc formed in 2021 by senators who were affiliated with parties when they were elected but became independent during their term.
There are 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Morena holds 40.2% of the seats (201), followed by the PAN with 114, the PRI with 69, the PT with 33, MC with 27, the PRD with 15 and PVEM with 41.
How many people voted for each candidate in the last presidential election in 2018?
The presidential election of 2018 saw candidates nominated by different coalitions, and the presidential race of 2024 points in the same direction.
In the 2018 election, there were four presidential candidates, only one of whom was an independent. The remaining three were backed by alliances between parties.
Ricardo Anaya Cortés was the candidate of the Por México al Frente coalition, composed of the PAN, PRD and MC. More than 12 million people — 22.2% of all voters — voted for him.
José Antonio Meade was the candidate of Todos Por México, a coalition comprising the PRI, Greens and Partido Nueva Alianza (New Alliance, PANAL), the latter of which lost its national registration after the election. Meade got 16.4% of votes, representing a total of 9.2 million votes.
Current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador was the candidate of the PT, Morena and the PES coalition known as Juntos Haremos Historia. Thirty million Mexicans voted for him, representing 53.1% of the entire electorate.
Finally, independent candidate Jaime Heliodoro Rodríguez Calderón, commonly known as “El Bronco,” won 2.9 million votes, or 5.23% of votes cast.
According to INE, the 2018 elections were the largest in Mexican history due to the number of political offices up for to vote. More than 18,000 seats were up for election — including the presidency — and 63.4% of registered voters participated.
An Interpol red notice was issued after the death of 10 miners in El Pinabete, Coahuila last year. The bodies of the trapped miners have yet to be recovered. (Mario Jasso/Cuartoscuro)
The owner of a Coahuila coal mine where 10 miners died last year has been arrested in Nuevo León on an illegal mining charge, the Federal Attorney General’s Office announced Thursday.
The miners became trapped in the El Pinabete mine in the municipality of Sabinas last August, when excavation work caused a tunnel wall to collapse. Efforts to rescue the miners failed, and their bodies remain underground almost 10 months after the accident occurred.
Despite intensive rescue efforts by an international team, the trapped miners could not be rescued. (Especial/Cuartoscuro)
The FGR said in a statement that Luis Rafael García Luna Acuña, the majority owner of the mine, had been ordered to stand trial on a charge of “unlawful exploitation of an asset that belongs to the nation.”
It said that the charge was related to the events that led to the miners becoming trapped on Aug. 3, 2022.
The FGR said that on May 18 it applied for and obtained a search warrant for a property in San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León, to complement a warrant issued for the arrest of García. The mine owner was subsequently arrested at the property.
The FGR said that a Coahuila-based federal judge who ordered García to stand trial set a period of one month and 15 days for prosecutors and defense lawyers to prepare their cases.
The suspect will remain in preventive detention in a Coahuila prison as he awaits trial.
Another owner of the El Pinabete mine, Cristian Eloir Solís Arriaga, was arrested on an illegal mining charge last September and remains in preventive detention.
Mexico will need to rely on migration to fill the gaps left by an aging population, says the World Bank. (Elizabeth Ruiz/Cuartoscuro)
Mexico’s population is no longer growing and may soon need more foreign workers, the World Bank has said in its 2023 World Development report, entitled “Migrants, Refugees, and Societies.”
While the country’s population “is still relatively young,” the report says that it is aging rapidly. Its demographic pyramid “has begun to assume an inverted shape and is projected to become even more lopsided by 2050,” the report said.
While Mexico’s demographics remain relatively young, a slowdown in population growth means that there could be a shortage of workers by 2050. (Margarito Perez Retana/Cuartoscuro)
Traditionally a country with high levels of emigration, the report also notes that Mexico’s fertility rate has dropped to just above replacement levels.
According to the National Institute of Geography and Statistics (INEGI), in the last 70 years Mexico’s population has grown from 25.8 million in 1950 to 126 million in 2020. Between 2010 and 2020 alone, the population increased by 14 million inhabitants.
However, in 2020, Mexico’s population stopped growing and started to shrink. The World Bank expects it to decrease from 127 million in 2022 to 116 million by 2100.
With the world’s population becoming grayer at an unprecedented pace, many countries are “increasingly reliant on migration to realize their long-term growth potential,” the report says. This is especially true for wealthy and middle-income economies.
Mexico is an important part of the migrant route north to the United States.. (Cuartoscuro.com)
Many middle-income countries, traditionally the main sources of migration, will soon find themselves competing for foreign workers, a phenomenon already seen in Mexico, Thailand, Tunisia and Turkey, where populations have begun to shrink.
Wealthier nations like Germany, the United States and South Korea are already struggling to replace their aging populations.
Meanwhile, nations with lower average incomes, like Nigeria and the Sub-Saharan African countries, are expected to continue to grow in population, the report said, leading to higher levels of unemployment – already an issue for such nations.
For people in low- and middle-income countries, international migration has proved to be a powerful method of poverty reduction, the report says. When migrants’ skills and attributes strongly match the needs of their destination society, they can bring great benefits.
A new government work visa program, designed to aid in the completion of flagship projects, may help Mexico to capitalize on the number of migrants who travel through the country en route to the United States. (Moisés Pablo Nava/Cuartoscuro.com)
“Migration can be a powerful force for prosperity and development,” said World Bank Senior Managing Director Axel van Trotsenburg. “When it is managed properly, it provides benefits for all people — in origin and destination societies.”
Mexico is in a unique position, as an origin, destination and transit country for migrants. In recent years, the number of Central American migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border has increased, and for most, crossing Mexico remains an essential part of that journey.
Not all migrants decide to continue on to the United States, and many choose to settle in other Latin American countries — with Mexico being a common destination.
This week, President López Obrador announced a program offering temporary work visas to immigrants from Central America, arguing that the government needs workers to complete a number of flagship infrastructure projects.
“We need a workforce for these projects, especially… skilled labor,” he said, while promising that migrants wouldn’t be taking job opportunities away from Mexicans. “Fortunately, there are jobs,” he said.
According to the World Bank, there are around 184 million migrants worldwide, representing 2.3% of the global population. Of these, 43% live in developing countries.
With places like Malaysia, Mexico, and Turkey becoming destination countries for migrants from lower-income economies in the same region, “policies will have to be adapted to these changing circumstances, thereby requiring a shift of perspective for policy makers and society at large.”
U.S Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo (left) and Mexico's Economy Minister Raquel Buenrostro (right) at a recent meeting. (Economy Ministry/Twitter)
There have been 117 investments announced in Mexico by private companies so far this year, worth a total of US $48 billion, the Economy Ministry (SE) said.
Around US $30 billion of this will be invested throughout 2023, and the rest will be injected into Mexico’s economy over the next three years.
Mexico has benefited from investment fueled by “nearshoring” especially in automobile manufacturing, such as this Audi facility in Puebla. (Carlos Aranda/Unsplash)
Nearly US $30 billion will go to the manufacturing industry, US $15 billion to transport, US $2 billion to commerce and US $433 million to mining.
“This demonstrates Mexico’s competitive advantages: stability in its public finances and strength in its currency; social and political stability: a robust air, rail, sea and land infrastructure that connects us with the whole world; a young and skilled workforce; significant tax incentives; and the development of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises,” theSE said on Twitter.
By nationality, the United States leads the way in foreign investments in Mexico, accounting for more than US $30 billion of the total. Other countries in line behind the U.S. include, in order of rank, measured in U.S. dollars:
China, with US $3.7 billion
Argentina, with US $3.6 billion
Germany, with US $2.5 billion
Taiwan, with US $2 billion
Netherlands, with US $1.6 billion
Canada, with US $875 million
Belgium, with US $800 million
The USMCA trade agreement has helped Mexico to attract significant investment in 2023. Here, finance ministers from the three countries meet, with Mexican Economy Minister Raquel Buenrostro on the left. (Twitter)
Excluding these two transactions, FDI in the first quarter of 2022 would be nearly 50% lower.
“The behavior observed in the first quarter of 2023 represents the confidence of investors to maintain and expand their investments in the country,” the SE said this week.
The main driver for this strong performance is likely to be companies’ “nearshoring” operations from Asia to the Americas — a trend that has been boosted by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
The trilateral free-trade agreement has particularly benefited Mexico’s automotive industry, which registered record FDI in the first quarter of 2023.
Archaeologist Erika Lucero Robles Cortés analyzes the remains of a crocodile. (Mirsa Islas)
Seeking to unravel some historical mysteries, archaeologist Erika Lucero Robles Cortés’ research into the remains of Mexica-era crocodiles has taken her in unexpected directions.
Robles was fascinated by the remains that late-20th-century excavators had found in the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlán, in what is now modern-day Mexico City. There have been 21 remains found within the site, along with eight pendants incorporating crocodile teeth, all dating back about 500 years.
Archaeological zone of the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlán in modern-day Mexico City. (Mirsa Islas)
The remains were unearthed in ritual deposits and offerings, as well as in a dignitary’s tomb.
In most cases, their skin had been painstakingly kept intact.
Robles has studied the crocodile’s significance in contemporaneous sources such as codices and has noted that the reptiles are not endemic to central Mexico. Their natural habitats in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean were hundreds of miles away from the Mexica (Aztec) capital.
“Airplanes, and all the ways of transport we have now, didn’t exist,” Robles said. “We can imagine it was very difficult to transport all the animals from other parts of the empire to the center of Mexico.”
Rain God Tlaloc on a crocodile in the Codex Borgia, an important 16th-century Mexica manuscript.
Yet, she added, “It was difficult but I suppose very important to the Mexica.”
For over a decade, Robles worked for the Templo Mayor Project as a researcher. She published her findings on crocodiles as a book in August 2022.
To research how and why the Mexica brought these large, dangerous reptiles to Tenochtitlán in pre-Hispanic times, Robles researched present-day crocodiles before branching into other fields, including biology. Her experiences included learning about how crocodiles are trapped and transported today.
Joining biologists for a catch-and-release expedition on the Banco Chinchorro island in Quintana Roo, she saw the species’ full range of size — from diminutive hatchlings to an awe-inspiring nearly nine-footer.
She even participated in a nighttime trapping journey, watching as the beady eyes of a massive reptile broke the surface of the water before it was captured.
Trying to catch a crocodile can be deadly for both the hunter and prey. As Robles wrote for the Harvard University publication ReVista in February, a roped crocodile can break free with enough force to dislocate a human arm, while a captured specimen can become so frightened that it suffers a lethal glycemic shock.
A crocodile sold as food in San Juan Market in Mexico City. (Michelle De Anda)
Another discovery came after she discussed crocodiles with a taxidermist in Tapachula, Chiapas, who happened to have hunted a relative of the species — the caiman — in the 1970s. As explained in the ReVista story, although the hunter and his colleagues used modern equipment such as shotguns, they killed smaller caimans with a blow to the head, leaving the pelt intact.
In her book, Robles marveled at the fact that a crocodile pelt from the Templo Mayor also had a pair of head wounds, one of which may have been the death blow.
“I think it was very difficult in the past,” Robles said. “If the person wanted a crocodile alive, they had to know about the behavior of the animal and different techniques of catching them.”
As for why it was so important to bring the animals to the Templo Mayor, she noted their significance in the Mexica’s cosmology and religion.
“The crocodile symbolized many things,” Robles said. “For example, its mouth represented the underworld. The plates all over the back represented the earth. Also, the crocodile represented the fertility of the earth.”
Their remains were placed in Aztec ritual deposits to represent the earth, joining other terrestrial or semi-terrestrial reptiles such as turtles and snakes.
The remains of a juvenile crocodile made as an offering to the gods. (Mirsa Islas)
She added that cipactli (thorny being), one of the Nahuatl names for the crocodile, is also the name of “the first day of the calendars of [peoples] in Mesoamerica. And so the animal is linked with the earth, with the underworld, with fertility, with the days in the calendar, with creation and also with water.”
Even today, Robles noted, “In many towns, the people think crocodiles can call the water, the rain.” She cited contemporary festivals in which residents dress as crocodiles to ask for rainfall and a festival in San Pedro Huamelula, Oaxaca, involving a symbolic marriage between the mayor and a reptile variously described as a crocodile, caiman or alligator.
Underscoring the crocodile’s continued significance, its body parts are sold in Mexican markets, sometimes for magical purposes — as Robles learned from visits to places like the Mercado Sonora in central Mexico City, famed for its sales of animal parts (and live animals) for rituals.
While these excursions deepened her knowledge, she had to go elsewhere to understand the skeletal composition of crocodile remains from the Templo Mayor. She mentioned the Tapachula taxidermist as among the helpful sources in this regard.
“I made many trips to … Tapachula [and] Quintana Roo to understand the animals’ behavior, techniques, [and] understand the bones,” Robles said. “I had the opportunity to go to a zoo in Toluca and another in Chiapas to know the animals. At the Toluca zoo, I had the opportunity to take a course about handling these animals.”
Robles captures a crocodile during a study project at Banco Chinchorro, Quintana Roo.
“All these things gave me another lens to understand these animals,” she said.
Rich Tenorio is a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily.
