The nation's central bank building in Mexico City. (Wikimedia Commons)
The Bank of México (Banxico) has lifted its benchmark interest by 75 basis points to 9.25%, the highest level since a new monetary policy regime was introduced in 2008 amid the Great Recession.
The five members of the central bank’s board voted unanimously to increase the overnight interbank rate by 0.75% at Thursday’s monetary policy meeting. It was the 11th consecutive meeting at which the key rate was lifted, and the third consecutive time that the board members settled on a 0.75% hike.
The decision comes a week after the United States Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate by 75 basis points to a range of 3-3.25%.
In a statement announcing its latest decision, Banxico noted that inflation remains high both globally and in Mexico, and predicted “future [upward] adjustments” to its key rate.
“The accumulated inflationary pressures associated with both the pandemic and the military conflict [in Ukraine] continue affecting headline and core inflation, which in the first half of September registered annual rates of 8.76% and 8.27%, respectively, thus remaining at levels unseen in two decades,” the bank said.
“… The governing board evaluated the magnitude and diversity of the shocks that have affected inflation and its determinants, along with the evolution of medium- and long-term inflation expectations and the price formation process. It also considered the increasing challenges for monetary policy stemming from the ongoing tightening of global financial conditions, the environment of significant uncertainty, the inflationary pressures accumulated as a result of the pandemic and the geopolitical conflict, as well as the possibility of greater effects on inflation,” it said.
“Based on these considerations, and with the presence of all its members, the board decided unanimously to raise the target for the overnight interbank interest rate by 75 basis points to 9.25%.”
Banxico forecasts that headline inflation will begin to decline in early 2023 and continue to fall, reaching a level of 4% in the fourth quarter of next year. By the third quarter of 2024, the central bank anticipates a rate of 3.1%. Banxico has a 3% inflation target with tolerance of 1% in both directions.
The bank’s next interest rate decision is scheduled for November 10 with a final announcement for 2022 due on December 15. Additional 0.75% hikes following board meetings on those dates would leave the central bank’s key rate at 10.75% at the close of 2022.
Farmer Javier López in the Sierra Mixe mountains of northeastern Oaxaca looks over his crops of Oloton maize, a self-fertilizing variety. Allen Van Deynze/University of California-Davis
Widely considered the birthplace of maize, Mexico features in two new books about this ancient, beloved and important crop, which has been the focus of controversy and polemic here in recent years.
Used in multiple ways, from tamales to beer to popping corn, maize is nevertheless at risk of losing its diversity.
Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction, by University of Cambridge scholar Helen Anne Curry, is a deep dive into preservation efforts. BBC food journalist Dan Saladino’s Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them, which examines foods imperiled around the globe, looks at the unusual Oloton self-fertilizing maize that grows in the mountains of Oaxaca.
Each author approaches their narrative from the perspective of loss of indigenous food varieties and attempts at conservation.
“Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction,” by University of Cambridge scholar Helen Anne Curry, is a deep dive into maize preservation efforts. Helen Anne Curry
“Even though I focus on one … unique and distinct global commodity — corn — the story I tell here about maize is actually relevant to understanding this broader story,” said Curry, the Peter Lipton Lecturer in History of Modern Science and Technology. “It’s not just varieties of maize cultivated in different parts of the world, especially Latin America – there are threats that bear on many different crops in many different parts of the world.”
Saladino is also concerned about endangered foods – of which there are 5,000 from 130 countries, according to the Ark of Taste catalog on the website for Slow Food USA.
For the book, he picked 35, including a sweet honey rich in protein because of the larvae within it, and an unpasteurized cheese from Albania with a lemony taste from wild bacteria. Individuals he interviewed included a Palestinian activist named Vivien Sansour, who was inspired to create a seed library in the West Bank after attending a conference in Mexico and learning Subcomandante Marcos’ maxim, “sin maiz, no hay pais” (without maize there is no country).
Saladino said that there are different reasons why foods are becoming endangered. “Some foods are being impacted because land use has changed,” he said. “Some are being impacted by lost skills, others because of climate change, others because of conflicts.”
“Mexico has a phenomenal history of work and research by Mexican agronomists, sustained by Mexican political institutions, in the development of maize culture from the 20th century onward,” says Curry. University of California Press
“Many people are surprised to learn that one-third of the world’s wheat globally today originates in the Black Sea region of Ukraine and Russia,” he said by way of example. “Even if the war does not directly impact the supply of the wheat, global food production will be heavily influenced.”
Global production of corn goes back to the 19th and 20th centuries: the crop was hybridized in the U.S. In Germany, the Haber-Bosch process created synthetic fertilizer. More recently, transgenic varieties have been introduced. It’s all added up to skyrocketing production.
“Part of it is the significant breeding that’s occurred, and the resulting change of yield we’ve seen over time. Genetic changes achieved through various breeding practices have created the best possible combination of genetic material to survive in varied conditions.” She listed other, more specific factors – “what kind of fertilizer, how often they’re irrigated … It’s not all about genetic changes.”
While Saladino said that attempts to ramp up production have been done “for a good reason,” as a society, we’ve not “put the brakes on wanting more and more yield.”
BBC food journalist Dan Saladino’s book, “Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them,” looks at the unusual Oloton self-fertilizing maize that grows in the mountains of Oaxaca. Artur Tixiliski
“At the same time, we’ve ignored all the other factors at play, the impact by the system on diversity, soil, water use, the risk you embark [upon] in manufacturing very high-yield corn, the risk you find in terms of disease,” he said.
The Western world, he notes, has a history of ignoring the full picture: when the conquistadors arrived in Mexico, they were entranced with maize but ignored how it was grown. It was planted using the indigenous milpa system, alongside a nutritious complement of crops – squash and beans.
Europeans ate maize in isolation and as a result, suffered from the disease pellagra. “I think one of the big ideas in the book is the complexity that exists in indigenous traditions or food systems that many people fail to realize – in many cases, still fail to recognize or fully understand,” Saladino said.
One part of Mexico that Hernán Cortés found hard to conquer was the Mixe region of Oaxaca. Centuries later, the regional Oloton maize made headlines in scientific journals. “I was reading that a breakthrough had been made in understanding how a particularly unusual type of maize self-fertilizes,” Saladino said.
Saladino says that global corn production has focused on yield at the expense of biodiversity and the negative impacts the industry is having on soil and water. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The variety drips with a mucus-like substance containing microbes that interact with the plant and air to provide fertilizer in the region’s nutrient-poor soil. “It’s one of the examples you can cite [to prove] that so much genetic diversity out there still exists,” Saladino said. “There’s so much we’re still learning.
“We don’t know if we’re going to need this in the future. So much is changing in terms of climate,” he said. Yet, he added, “Relying heavily on monocultures and [on] reducing diversity, it’s a risky situation to have arrived at.”
To date, Mexico has managed to hold onto diversity when it comes to this crop; Curry, familiar with sweet corn from growing up in the United States, was amazed by the many varieties of maize in Mexico. “I’ve only been privileged to experience a handful of other different kinds of maize in my life.” In that handful, she includes the corn on the cob she had in Mexico City.
“For obvious reasons, there’s a long history of experiences of far more varieties of maize and landraces of maize existing in Mexico,” she said.
A landrace is a crop variety that has localized characteristics due to adaptation over time to a region’s conditions.
Curry is pleased with Mexican initiatives to preserve maize diversity. “Mexico has a phenomenal history of work and research by Mexican agronomists, sustained by Mexican political institutions, in the development of maize culture from the 20th century onward,” she said. “Today, Mexican national agricultural research institutions continue to be central.”
She has visited many such institutions while researching her book, including the International Center for the Improvement of Maize and Wheat in Chapingo, México state. Mexican scientists she interviewed voiced concern about indigenous maize being crowded out by imported corn from the U.S.
“There is,” she said, “as many people surely know, a strong movement in Mexico from a variety of different groups – environmentalists, indigenous groups, campesino organizations and also scientists … They feel very strongly and rightly that the restriction of maize imports from the U.S., especially transgenic maize, is essential to maintain the integrity of Mexican native maize, varieties of criollo maize.”
Saladino noted the role of NAFTA in facilitating the imports of U.S. corn into Mexico: “A crop that had been domesticated in Mexico now travels from the States to Mexico in huge amounts, a commodity type of corn rather than original, ancestral Mexican maize. It’s a complicated story.”
He notes a positive development: Mexico City-based celebrity chef Enrique Olvera, whom he interviewed for the book, is incorporating indigenous maize into his menu.
“He pays [farmers] way above market price for the maize,” Saladino said. “He talks about maize in the same way people refer to the diversity of wine. Each one is a reflection of its place, of its people, of the different seasons as well.”
Pallbearers at the funeral of Yaqui activist Tomás Rojo of Sonora, one of 54 land and environmental activists in Mexico killed in 2021, according to Global Witness. Twitter
More land and environmental activists were killed in Mexico than any other country last year, according to an international non-governmental organization.
Global Witness (GW) conducted a worldwide analysis that found that 200 land and environmental defenders were murdered in 2021. Fifty-four of that number were killed in Mexico, an increase of 24, or 80%, compared to the 2020 tally of 30.
“Mexico was the country with the highest recorded number of killings, with defenders killed every month,” GW said in a new report titled Decade of Defiance.
“… Over 40% of those killed were indigenous people, and over a third of the total were forced disappearances, including at least eight members of the Yaqui community.”
Jaime Jiménez Ruiz, a staunch protector of the Rio Verde in Oaxaca, was killed on March 28. Twitter
GW said that “conflicts over land and mining were each linked to two-thirds of lethal attacks,” and “around two-thirds of the killings were concentrated in the states of Oaxaca and Sonora, both of which have significant mining investments.”
“[Mexico] has risen rapidly over the last ten years as one of the most dangerous places for land and environmental defenders, with 154 documented cases over this period. The majority of killings (131) took place between 2017 and 2021,” said the NGO, which has exposed environmental and human rights abuses for almost 30 years.
GW said that forced disappearances of environmental activists are common in Mexico and carried out by both criminal groups and corrupt officials.
“Indigenous territories are highly vulnerable to the prolific number of large-scale extractive projects promoted by national and foreign companies and backed by the Mexican government. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has raised concerns about the lack of adequate consultation with potentially affected communities and the subsequent attacks on those standing against signature projects,” it said.
Fidel Heras Cruz, a communal landowner in Oaxaca who opposed hydroelectric projects along the Rio Verde and in Paso de la Reina, Oaxaca, was killed in January 2021. Facebook
“The Commission has flagged criminalization and smear campaigns as harmful threats against land and environmental defenders in Mexico.”
The NGO noted that impunity for crimes committed against land and environmental defenders “remains rife, with over 94% of crimes not reported, and only 0.9% resolved.”
GW highlighted the case of Irma Galindo Barrios, a Mixtec woman who disappeared in Oaxaca last October. “Since 2018, Irma had faced intimidation by public officials, as well as harassment, persecution, defamation campaigns and death threats as a result of her defense of the forests,” the NGO’s report said.
Global Witness highlighted the case of activist Irma Galindo Barrios, who fought for Oaxaca’s forests and many other causes. She disappeared in October 2021 after years of threats.
“Following multiple disappearances and murders in the Yaqui community last year, officials stated they believed drug cartels were responsible. Some in the community, however, said they also suspect the government and corporations interested in Yaqui land and resources of being involved,” GW said.
Among other land and environment defenders murdered in Mexico last year were Yaqui water activist Tomás Rojo and Guerrero forest protector Carlos Marqués Oyorzábal.
After Mexico, Colombia was the deadliest country for land and environment defenders with 33 murders last year. Brazil ranked third with 26 followed by the Philippines with 19 and Nicaragua with 15. Over three-quarters of last year’s murders of environmental activists occurred in Latin America, GW said.
The NGO also said that research found that a total of 1,733 land and environment defenders have been killed over the past ten years, a figure that equates to one person murdered every two days.
Tomás Rojo speaking to activists and residents of pueblos originarios in Tijuana in 2019. Omar Martínez/Cuartoscuro
“All over the world, indigenous peoples, environmental activists and other land and environmental defenders risk their lives for the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss,” an unnamed GW spokesperson said in a press release.
“They play a crucial role as a first line of defense against ecological collapse, yet are under attack themselves facing violence, criminalization and harassment perpetuated by repressive governments and companies prioritizing profit over human and environmental harm,” the spokesperson said.
“With democracies increasingly under attack globally and worsening climate and biodiversity crises, this report highlights the critical role of defenders in solving these problems and makes an urgent appeal for global efforts to protect and reduce attacks against them.”
Three Mexican astronomers have discovered an exoplanet or extrasolar planet (not in our solar system) using observations gathered from the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a system of ten radio telescopes with observing stations located across the continental United States (and Hawaii) that captures radio signals from space and digitizes them.
The team of astronomers, led by Salvador Curiel Ramírez from Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM) created the first 3-dimensional model of two stars in a binary system, with a Jupiter-like planet orbiting one of them. Combining over 80 years of data gathered through optical observations and VLBA observations, the astronomers said they have discovered something that might assist scientists with the mysteries of our own solar system.
“Since most stars are in binary or multiple systems, being able to understand systems such as this one will help us understand planet formation in general,” said Curiel in an interview.
The two stars are about 20 light-years from our solar system, relatively close in terms of space. The larger star, which is orbited by the planet, has about 44 percent of the mass of our sun, and the smaller one has 17 percent of the mass of our sun. They orbit each other about every 229 years. The exoplanet cannot be seen directly but its existence is inferred by tracing the larger star’s movement, allowing astronomers to detect a slight wobble caused by the gravitational pull of the planet.
From above a planet about twice the size of Jupiter, this artist’s conception shows the star that planet is orbiting and that star’s binary companion in the distance. Credit: Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF
“We are looking for planets that have similar characteristics as earth, ” said Curiel, “with orbits appropriate for life, to try and answer the question, is there life on other planets?” He added that within the next ten years, the number of planets like this found outside of our solar system could triple or quadruple in number. To date, 5,000 exoplanets have been discovered.
Curiel says the group received pushback from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory that manages the VLBA, who said they wouldn’t find any new information by reviewing the data and adding new observations.
“But we finally got the time, and then we noticed with new observations, that after five or six years, the signal was still there. That meant they were real.”
Despite prohibitions against junk food in Mexico's schools, many still have in-house snack shops, or tienditas, that sell unhealthy snacks.
Mexico City’s battle to get junk food out of its schools has been as successful as a bag of Doritos is healthy.
A recent report shows that approximately nine out of 10 primary schools in the capital city are failing to comply with regulations against selling junk food on campus. Potato and corn chips, cookies, paletas (popsicles), flavored milk and artificial juices, both with added sugar, are among the choices for many 6- to 12-year-old students.
In light of that, the civil organizations El Poder del Consumidor (Consumer Power), the Network for Children’s Rights in Mexico (REDIM) and ContraPESO Coalition are calling on legislators to take steps to transform schools into healthier places.
The study of 77 primary schools in Mexico City, carried out in June 2022, showed that the average child there consumes more than 550 calories of ultraprocessed products in a single school day. If things don’t change, it said, one of every two those students will develop diabetes in their lifetime.
According to a study of Mexico City elementary schools in June, 9 out of 10 don’t comply with regulations that prohibit junk food and sugary drinks on the premises and 76% don’t have potable water available for pupils. El Poder del Consumidor
The diabetes issue came to a head during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was revealed that many Mexicans who were dying of the disease had underlying conditions such as high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes. At 330,000 deaths, Mexico ranks fifth in the world for COVID-19 mortality, according to the World Health Organization.
The civil organizations are asking legislators to approve an initiative to reform the General Education Law and make food options at school healthier. They said the initiative is supported by the Ministry of Health, UNICEF, the Pan American Health Organization and other national and international organizations.
Mexico currently has 4 million school-age children classified as overweight or obese, El Poder del Consumidor said.
The report that focused on Mexico City showed that 73% of schools sold fast food, 75% offered sweet snacks, 40% peddled sugary drinks such as soda and 76% did not make drinking water available to their students.
Dorilocos are a popular order at snack vendors all over Mexico, including outside schools. A combination of snack foods atop Doritos, a serving can easily reach 500–600 calories. Carlosrojas20/Istock
Moreover, 90% of the schools had at least one, but usually more, vendors just outside the school gate selling items such as ice cream, candy, sticky-sweet tamarind sticks (banderillas) and sugary juices. Outside one school, a vendor was observed selling Dorilocos, a snack in which a bag of Doritos is split open and topped with ingredients such as gummy bears, pickled pig skin, hot sauce or Japanese-style peanuts, a popular Mexican snack sold in convenience stores. In all fairness, carrots and cucumbers are topping options as well.
“It is useless that inside the school they try not to sell so much junk food if the children go out and see the stalls with sweets, potato chips and ice cream here on the road,” said the mother of one student. “Many ask for them, and their parents buy them for them.”
The report found there was limited access at school to the healthy snacks that the regulations’ guidelines call for, such as vegetables, fruits, legumes, seeds and nuts and whole grains without added sugar, such as amaranth, oatmeal or granola. The guidelines also call for an ample supply of drinking water.
At a press conference, Liliana Bahena, coordinator of the My Healthy School campaign of El Poder del Consumidor, said, “Since 2010, a regulation of food and beverages in schools was created; however, the food industry intervened in its design, making it more permissive with ultraprocessed products.”
The COVID-19 pandemic cast into sharp relief Mexico’s problems with childhood obesity and diabetes. The nation has seen 330,000 deaths from COVID. SEP
“Since then, the regulation — seemingly intentionally designed with deep loopholes in design, implementation and oversight — has not been enforced,” Bahena continued. “During all this time, schools have established themselves as obesogenic [promoting excessive weight gain] environments, which is why their transformation requires comprehensive actions aimed at adopting a healthy, fair and sustainable school feeding policy.”
A report prepared by the public policy research firm Probatio showed that in Mexico’s 2012–2015 and 2015–2018 legislatures, 53 initiatives were presented to regulate unhealthy food and beverages in different environments. However, 56% never passed, and 36% were flat-out discarded, the report stated.
Bahena said a major barrier to compliance is the lack of supervision and a general failure to put the guidelines into practice. For example, the regulation calls on each school to have a committee, composed mainly of parents, that coordinates what foods, snacks and beverages will be sold on campus, based on the criteria of a good diet. In the schools visited in the survey, no one knew of the existence of these committees.
“It is inexcusable to postpone the protection of children’s nutrition and health in their own schools,” said Doré Castillo, coordinator of the ContraPESO Coalition. “In these times of crisis, it is crucial to ensure that the school environment is healthy, especially for children and adolescents in vulnerable situations. For this reason, we call on the deputies of the Education Commission to approve the reforms to the General Education Law. The opportunity to correct the previous deficiencies of the legislation is in your hands, to guarantee that it is an effective instrument of protection.”
Founded in 2006, the San Miguel Writers' Conference brings literary talent from around the world. Depositphotos
Authorities in Guanajuato have announced the construction of a World Trade Center (WTC) campus in San Miguel de Allende, a development that will include business, tourism, retail, educational and health care facilities as well as more than 600 homes.
Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo and San Miguel de Allende Mayor Mauricio Trejo announced the US $350 million facility at an event on Wednesday at which they highlighted the economic and employment benefits its construction and operation will generate.
Touted as the world’s first WTC campus, the development will include offices, a business center, academic facilities, a convention center, a hotel, a hospital, a sports complex, shops, a park, a “native forest” and 640 homes in a private residential area. It will be built on a 90-hectare site located next to the San Miguel de Allende-Dolores Hidalgo highway.
Construction is slated to begin in the spring of 2023 and conclude three years later, although some facilities will be completed earlier. Rodríguez said on Twitter that the announcement of the WTC campus was a “watershed in the history of our state.”
San Miguel de Allende Mayor Mauricio Trejo speaks to the crowd at Wednesday’s announcement. Facebook/Gobierno Municipal de San Miguel de Allende
He described the development as a “first world project that will be an asset as a business center and for tourism promotion” and thanked WTC executives and other “businesspeople and investors who believe in the economic potential of Guanajuato.”
Mayor Trejo, who recently met with WTC executives in New York, also highlighted the announcement on Twitter, declaring that San Miguel de Allende will be a world class business destination.
The Guanajuato government said in a statement that the arrival of the WTC will boost business tourism in San Miguel de Allende and allow the city to consolidate itself as a preferred destination for the development of “international economic links,” especially between Mexican and United States companies.
“Guanajuato is a state that has a great opportunity to show the world the greatness of Mexico,” Rodríguez said at Wednesday’s event, attended by WTC’s executive director of business development, Robin van Puyenbroeck, WTC México director Jorge Acevedo, investors and other government officials.
Trejo said that the project requires “vision, courage and economic resources” and will allow San Miguel de Allende to be a world class business and medical destination in addition to a cultural destination “par excellence.”
The World Trade Centers Association — established in the United States in 1970 — says on its website that it “stimulates trade and investment opportunities for commercial property developers, economic development agencies, and international businesses looking to connect globally and prosper locally.”
“Our association,” it adds, “serves as an ‘international ecosystem’ of global connections, iconic properties, and integrated trade services under the umbrella of a prestigious brand.”
There are already WTCs in several Mexican cities including Mexico City, Guadalajara, Veracruz, Querétaro and Nuevo Laredo.
The suspension was lifted at the request of the National Tourism Promotion Fund, which is managing the entire US $10 billion Maya Train project. Tren Maya/Twitter
A judge has revoked a suspension order against construction of the Cancún-Playa del Carmen section of the Maya Train railroad, allowing the federal government to proceed with the project.
Work on the northern stretch of section 5 of the 1,500-kilometer railroad (Tramo 5 Norte) stopped in August after the nongovernmental organization the National Council of Strategic Litigation successfully challenged the project in court, on the grounds that an environmental impact statement (EIS) hadn’t been completed and approved.
On Tuesday, Mérida-based federal judge Adrián Fernando Novelo Pérez lifted the suspension order he issued early last month because the federal Environment Ministry has now approved the EIS for Tramo 5 Norte.
His ruling came in response to an application to lift the suspension filed by the National Tourism Promotion Fund, which is managing the entire US $10 billion Maya Train project.
President López Obrador mentioned the decision at his regular news conference on Wednesday, declaring that “all the injunctions” on the government train project have been overturned — although a suspension order against the controversial Playa del Carmen-Tulum section of the railroad, the southern stretch of section 5, still stands.
“The pseudoenvironmentalists were wrong,” he said, using a term with which he frequently derides opponents of the Maya Train.
López Obrador also said he would travel to Mexico’s southeast every three weeks to inspect progress on his signature infrastructure project, which is slated to begin operations at the end of 2023.
Construction of the railroad – which will run through Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Chiapas – is “historic,” he said, asserting that only former president Porfirio Díaz – who ruled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – had done something similar.
However, under Diáz, railroads were built by foreign companies, López Obrador said, whereas Mexican firms are working on the Maya Train project.
“This is a passenger and freight railroad, for tourism, to connect all the archaeological areas, … that is being built with the participation of Mexican companies without [taking out] loans, with money from the budget that was previously stolen but which now … [allows] us to invest in this,” he said.
The military is being placed into more and more everyday situations in the name of public safety, but many Mexicans don't seem too upset about it, the writer notes. file photo
The administration’s move to hand over control of virtually all federal law enforcement to the military could determine what kind of country we live in for the foreseeable future.
There’s nothing clandestine about the move; it’s all happening right out in the open, and the press coverage has been thorough. Yet you can sum up the prevailing public reaction in one word: meh. And that’s not really much of a word.
The indifference is understandable. People long ago lost confidence in their government’s ability to tackle crime after years of failed actions, counterproductive actions and inaction.
Replacing the federales with Army guys and their cooler uniforms and bigger guns seems aimed at reclaiming some of that lost cred. Will it?
Not likely, the public would say. Same dog, different fleas.
There’s nothing new about soldiers taking over federal law enforcement duties. The origin of this militarization is usually traced to December 2006, when the newly installed president, Felipe Calderón, sent the armed forces after the drug cartels in his home state of Michoacán, setting the tone for his policy by donning a green cap and army jacket (invariably depicted by political cartoonists as several sizes too big for him) for photo ops.
Former president Felipe Calderón in military garb in 2006.
But the true genesis may have been a decade earlier, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of using the military for public security. With that constitutional green light, Calderón’s strategy, originally billed as a temporary foray into one state has mission-creeped its way into a permanent nationwide military presence.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has doubled down on militarization. The president dissolved the civilian Federal Police and replaced it with a National Guard that was quickly absorbed into the armed forces. Hence, there will be no active civilian-controlled law enforcement elements at the federal level. Just state and local cops. All the rest is military.
This is where the public might want to re-think its ho-hum attitude. The dog may be the same but the fleas have multiplied and changed their personalities.
We’re not just talking here about flamboyant shootouts with narcos. The soldier/cops are authorized to carry out the everyday actions you associate with police work. The political analyst and El Universal columnist Maite Azuela recently listed some of them:
They can handle complaints from individuals. They can investigate you. They can gather intelligence via the internet without identifying themselves. They can wiretap you. They can search your home. They can stop you for infractions just like traffic cops. In other words, opportunities for abuse or corruption are not rare.
Of course, state and local law enforcement can do those things as well. For that matter, so could the now-defunct Federal Police. But those institutions are held accountable for their actions, at least in theory. The Army and Navy are much more powerful and relatively unchecked.
Still, if there’s one thing everyone in Mexico agrees on, it’s the need to do something about runaway violent crime, narco-generated or otherwise. The question is whether the military is the right agent for the task.
Toward that end, AMLO is not only expanding the military’s job specs to include public security along with national security, but he’s expanding its size as well. The National Guard number 118,000 today and in combination with the armed forces, 148,537 military personnel were deployed from December 2021 to January 2022.
That’s a rather hefty call-up for a country that’s not at war, faces no imminent foreign threat, has no plans to invade Ukraine, and isn’t expecting an interplanetary alien invasion any time soon. The extra boots on the ground are for domestic use.
It hasn’t gone unnoticed, including here at the Mexico News Daily, that AMLO campaigned for the presidency as a harsh critic of the very militarization he is now endorsing. To be fair, what the press and political opponents love to jump on as flip-flopping is not always a sin. If new evidence emerges, or the situation changes, or a convincing counter-argument is made, wouldn’t it be irresponsible not to change course? Witness former U.S. President Barack Obama on gay marriage and marijuana decriminalization.
In this case, however, AMLO voters have a right to feel betrayed that they voted for militarization without knowing it. Many surely thought they were voting against it. Also, it’s interesting to note that the idea of an all-powerful Mexican Army can seem more appealing once you find yourself in charge of said Army.
The argument in favor of militarization is fairly simple. The public security crisis is big and urgent, and the armed forces are the biggest and strongest counterforce we’ve got. But the assumption that the armed forces are our best bet for getting crime under control is just that— an assumption. There are some good reasons to doubt it.
Other than the above-mentioned likelihood of abuse, the obvious objection is that soldiers are trained for war, not police work. Their default logic favors force, something police officers are supposed to try their best to avoid. Taken to extremes, innocent victims might be considered mere collateral damage in an effort to defeat an enemy. That’s not most people’s idea of public security.
High-value target operations, such as locating and moving in on a drug lord, fall within the military’s comfort zone (if “comfort” is the word). But most police tasks are mundane, such as urban patrols, investigations, and administrative work. They’re not good at these things and there’s plenty of evidence indicating that they don’t like doing them. They especially don’t like dealing with state and local police.
With apologies to W.S. Gilbert, when constabulary duty’s to be done, a soldier’s lot is not a happy one.
Perhaps the most relevant critique of militarization is that it detracts from the true solution to the crime problem, which is to put in place an efficient, equitable, smoothly operating and transparent criminal justice system along with well-trained, professional and incorruptible law enforcement officers at all levels of government. Unfortunately, that train has left the station, empty.
But who knows? Maybe by the end of AMLO’s term we’ll be pleasantly surprised at the progress in crime reduction, marked not only by happier statistics but also by concrete evidence, such as stores once shuttered by extortion threats opening up again, markedly reduced impunity in prosecuting crimes, and most important, by residents reporting that they honestly feel safer than before.
We probably shouldn’t hold our breaths on all that. Maybe the best we can hope for is that this risky plan doesn’t make things worse.
Kelly Arthur Garrett has been writing from Mexico since 1992. He lives in San Luis Potosí.
The number of firearms citizens turned into authorities under buyback and amnesty schemes declined significantly in the first three years of the current government compared to the same period of its predecessor, official data shows.
Via a freedom of information request, the newspaper El Universal obtained federal government data that showed that 9,975 guns were surrendered to the army and destroyed between 2019 and 2021, an 86% decline compared to the three-year period between 2013 and 2015, when 71,785 firearms were turned in by citizens.
The decline had begun by the second half of former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term and continued after President López Obrador took office. The number of firearms surrendered in the past three years is 55% lower than the 22,355 turned in between 2016 and 2018. Just 1,167 were handed in last year, compared to more than 31,000 in 2013.
Under different programs, citizens have been able to exchange firearms for cash, vouchers, domestic appliances and furniture. Prices paid range from less than 200 pesos (about US $10) to more than 16,000 pesos (almost US $800) depending on the kind of weapon.
Surrendered guns are destroyed by military personnel. Twitter: SedenaMX
While the number of guns surrendered between 2019 and 2021 declined 86% compared to the first three years of Peña Nieto’s term, the number of homicides committed with firearms increased 120% from 27,632 between 2013 and 2015 to 60,718 in the 36 months to the end of December 2021.
The inference is that people haven’t turned in weapons in great numbers in the last three years because they are worried about the high levels of gun violence and want to be able to protect themselves if need be.
José Andrés Sumano Rodríguez, an academic at the College of the Northern border who researches violence, told El Universal that people in some parts of the country decide to get a gun to protect their family and assets because the government’s security strategy isn’t working.
Gun ownership is legal in Mexico, but firearms can only be legally bought at one army-run store in Mexico City. They are, however, widely available on the black market. A 2021 study concluded there were firearms in at least 1.89 million Mexican homes, a figure that represents 5.5% of all households in the country.
The purpose of gun buyback programs is ultimately to reduce violence, but Sumano says they firearms surrendered in Mexico are “not the rifles or pistols” generally used in homicides.
Citizens generally hand in guns that are very old or don’t work, he said. “[The purpose of] these kinds of programs is to disarm people, but they haven’t yielded the expected results,” Sumano said. “We’re not going to find a Barrett rifle or an AK-47” among the weapons turned in, he added.
The newspaper Milenio, which also obtained data on surrendered firearms, reported that very few guns have been handed in recent years in highly violent states such as Baja California, Guerrero and Guanajuato. The numbers have been much higher in Mexico City, although there was a reduction there in 2020 and again in 2021.
A wave sloshes between rock walls at the Death Valley National Park in Nevada, caused by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake on Sept. 19 in Michoacán. Ambre Chaudoin/NPS
The powerful earthquake that rocked central Mexico on September 19 caused a phenomenon dubbed a “desert tsunami” almost 3,000 kilometers north of the epicenter in the U.S. state of Nevada.
The 7.7 magnitude quake triggered a seiche – a standing wave in an enclosed or partially enclosed body of water – in a pool of water in a Death Valley National Park cave.
Water in an Amargosa Valley pool of water known as Devils Hole started sloshing around the cave about five minutes after the temblor occurred.
“In a surprising quirk of geology, Monday’s … earthquake in Mexico triggered four-foot-tall waves in Devils Hole,” the United States National Park Service (NPS) said in a statement.
“… Monday’s waves, technically known as a seiche, stirred the sediment and rocks on the shallow shelf, also removing much of the algae growth. In the short term, this reduces food available to the pupfish.”
Ambre Chaudoin, a biological science technician, was at Devils Hole when the “desert tsunami” occurred and filmed the phenomenon, which lasted about 30 minutes. “This is a big earthquake, wherever it is,” she said as she filmed.
The NPS says on its website that Devils Holes is “an unusual indicator of seismic activity around the world.”
“Large earthquakes as far away as Japan, Indonesia and Chile have caused the water to ‘slosh’ in Devils Hole like water in a bathtub. Waves may splash as high as two meters up the walls,” it adds.
Apart from the September 19 seiche, the most recent Devils Hole “desert tsunami” occurred in July 2019 when a 7.1. magnitude earthquake struck near Ridgecrest, California.
