Aeroméxico announced Wednesday that it will begin operating at the new Mexico City airport in April with two flights per day to cities in Mexico’s southeast.
Aeroméxico said it will operate two flights per day from AIFA to Mérida, Yucatán, and Villahermosa, Tabasco.
“Our customers will have the flexibility … to fly from these two cities to AIFA or AICM,” the airline said in a statement.
AICM is the current Mexico City airport, located about 10 kilometers east of the capital’s historic center.
Aeroméxico said its decision to use AIFA was made after analyzing the needs of its customers. It had indicated late last year that it wasn’t planning to operate out of the new airport, built by the army on the Santa Lucía Air Force base.
CEO Andrés Conesa said the airline is in the final stage of a “profound process of restructuring and transformation that will allow us to emerge strengthened and take decisions like this for the benefit of the connectivity of our country, … our customers and the creation of jobs.”
Aeroméxico is the third airline to announce it will operate at AIFA after Volaris and VivaAerobús.
Volaris announced in October that it will operate daily flights to and from Tijuana, Baja California, and Cancún, Quintana Roo, starting March 21. VivaAerobús will fly to Monterrey, Nuevo León, and Guadalajara, Jalisco, starting the same date.
Airport departure fees will be more than 60% lower at AIFA than at AICM. Domestic passengers will pay 245 pesos (US $12) while those flying internationally will be charged 466 pesos (US $23).
A former federal environment minister has hit back at President López Obrador after he accused her of being responsible for environmental damage caused by a quarry on land near the coast in Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo.
Julia Carabias, environment minister during former president Ernesto Zedillo’s 1994-2000 government, accused the president of endangering the safety of environmentalists via his “unjustified and frequent defamation” of many such people including herself.
At his February 1 press conference, López Obrador noted that a permit for a quarry in the Caribbean coast resort city was granted to the company Calizas Industriales del Carmen (Calica) at the end Zedillo’s six-year term.
He expressed disbelief that a permit for a quarry across 400 hectares of land “in paradise” had been granted.
“I’m being informed and I’m going to confirm that it was Julia Carabias, the environment minister and … great defender of the environment” who authorized the permit, López Obrador said.
“Just imagine granting a permit to extract construction material [limestone] … 1,000 meters from the beach, the Caribbean, the turquoise sea, one of the most beautiful areas in the world. [It was] always double talk and double standards. That is no longer permitted,” he said.
The Environment Ministry (Semarnat) said in a statement last Thursday that Fedro Carlos Guillén Rodríguez, the former head of the National Institute of Ecology – which was part of Semarnap, as the Environment Ministry was formerly known – was in fact responsible for granting the permit to Calica and did so in the “record period of 36 days.”
The ministry said that mining beneath the water table caused “serious environmental damage such as the definitive and unrecoverable loss of the subsoil, alteration of the pressure of the aquifer … [and] the risk of collapses and fracturing of the subsoil.”
It also said that the operation of the quarry affected water quality, superficial and subterranean drainage, the natural landscape and local ecosystems.
In a statement published online, Carabias said that the history of the case involving Calica and the quarry permit it was granted was “extremely complex” and that López Obrador’s version of events was a “clumsy” simplification of the facts.
The Environment Ministry’s statement contributed to the “confusion and disinformation by alleging … that the only competent authority to authorize those permits … was Semarnap and no local authority had that kind of power,” she wrote.
In a lengthy statement, Carabias noted that the Quintana Roo government in fact authorized the expansion of the quarry site across two properties known as La Adelita and Corchalito in 1996.
She also acknowledged that quarrying “is legal in our country” and that “environmental legislation has instruments to prevent environmental damage, such as the assessment of environmental impact.”
Environmental authorizations are not “unconditional or eternal permits,” she wrote.
“They’re not blank checks. Each authorization … fixes precise conditions that regulate the operation of each project in a way that the impacts on the environment are minimized,” Carabias said.
“In case of non-compliance authorities can suspend the operation or revoke authorization at any time. … Semarnap, at the time, acted in accordance with the valid legal framework and the authorization was legal,” she said, adding that the federal environmental protection agency Profepa partially shut the quarry down in 2018 due to a breach of environmental conditions.
“… With regard to the questioning of the president and the federal government about my actions at the helm of Semarnap it’s timely to say … that it’s precisely thanks to the [current] environmental legislation (which emerged and was strengthened between 1987 and 1996) that the authorization granted in 2000 is public and transparent and therefore can be the object of an informed debate that allows us to seriously evaluate environmental management,” Carabias wrote.
She said that “the unjustified and frequent defamation of many environmental defenders” by the president at his morning press conferences – “as he has done on this occasion to me” – represents a threat to “our physical safety.”
Defamed environmentalists who contribute to public programs “in very complex and unsafe areas” where the government is not present are particularly vulnerable, Carabias said.
In addition to launching broadsides at environmentalists, AMLO also frequently attacks sections of the press, an oratorical modus operandi that has been blamed for encouraging hostility toward – and even physical assaults on – journalists who are critical of the government.
Carabias advised the president to stop his verbal attacks on environmentalists and cease “placing at risk those of us who work for Mexico with the sole interest of defending nature and human rights.”
“I don’t have double standards, as he slandered me,” she added. “I have always acted according to my principles and within the framework of legality.”
The National Institute of Indigenous People's building on Avenida Mexico-Coyoacan in Mexico City.
If you go by the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI) building on Avenida México-Coyocán in Mexico City, you will not see any government workers there, but rather signs and activists and even some handcrafts and Chiapas coffee for sale.
After months of protests in front of the building, on October 12, 2020, the Otomis of the Emiliano Zapata-Benito Juárez People’s Revolutionary Union simply took over INPI’s offices. Since then, none of the federal agency’s staff have been inside.
Such occupation of federal buildings is certainly nothing new in Mexico, but there is a plot twist: the fate of an irreplaceable collection of 23,000 pieces of Mexican folk art.
The people who have taken over the building are principally those that live in Mexico City, with roots in Santiago Mexquititlán, Querétaro. Starting in the 1960s, waves of indigenous Otomis and Mazahuas have been migrating to the capital from México state, Querétaro and Michoacán for both political and economic reasons.
Life in the city has not been easy for them, and many took over abandoned lots and earthquake-damaged buildings and made them their homes. For decades, they have fought with city authorities to remain in a number of these places, including in the regentrifying neighborhood of Roma. They’ve also struggled to get government-sponsored housing constructed on these lots.
Two examples of the collection’s items kept in specialized storage: indigenous rattles and an antique lacquered plate from Chiapas.
In the summer of 2020, it looked like they were making progress when the city moved to expropriate four lots of land to build such housing. But then the pandemic struck, halting everything.
Frustrated with what looked like yet another stalling tactic, the Otomis began protesting at offices of INPI, whom they believe should be more intimately involved in the matter.
When talks with the city broke down yet again in the fall, the Otomis voted to take over the building on Columbus Day.
Few might have cared about an office building, and indeed the occupation drifted along for more than a year. However, a recent interview by INPI head Adelfo Regino in January changed that by bringing attention to a collection of folk art housed in the building.
This is not just any collection of Mexican folk art: the collection of the National Museum of Arts and Folk Industries (MNAIP) is the first national collection of Mexican folk art in Mexico itself.
Founded in 1951, it brought together pieces dating as far back as the 17th century, began competitions to expand the collection with examples from living traditions, and is credited with bringing back handcraft traditions in several states that nearly disappeared.
Unfortunately, its building in Mexico City’s historic center was heavily damaged by the 1985 earthquake. Efforts to keep it open succeeded until 1998, when it closed for good.
Possession of the collection remained in federal hands and eventually became the property of INPI with the name of Acervo de Arte Indigena (Indigenous Art Heritage), despite the fact that most pieces are made by those of mixed heritage.
However it does have more work by indigenous peoples than many other collections.
INPI has a small museum in the north of Mexico City, where some pieces are exhibited, but the vast majority have been warehoused in facilities at the Mexico City office building, with specialized rooms conditioned for maximum preservation.
The importance of the collection is not generally known by the public, but the pieces have been available for viewing by researchers and museums both in Mexico and abroad. But since October 2020, INPI staff and other specialists have not been allowed to enter or work with the collection, raising concerns about its safekeeping.
Some of that concern is that there will be plundering of the collection, not because of anything this Otomi group has done but because such things have happened in Mexico before.
Two examples of unoccupied buildings in Mexico City that migrant Otomis took as squatters.
But the main problem, according to Regino and several experts, is that the collection’s environment needs to be monitored at least daily for temperature and humidity. The occupying Otomi group has locked the specialized warehouse areas, put tape on the doors and more to keep any accusations of theft away.
And so no one has gone into these rooms for over a year. That means that no one knows the conditions of the pieces inside.
Regino’s alarm has caught the attention of folk art experts such as Sol Rubín de la Borbolla (son of the founder of MNAIP) and scholar Marta Turok. It’s also generated accusations hurled at President López Obrador of failing to protect the collection.
In the meantime, the Otomi and INPI have traded accusations of neglect. INPI blames any possible damage to the collection on being blocked from it, but the Otomis put the responsibility onto INPI for ignoring their demands and not paying the power bills, resulting in various outages.
The indigenous protesters also accuse Regino of “criminalizing” their rights to protest, with INPI making a formal complaint to the city for the taking over of the building.
The day after Regino’s interview with the newspaper Reforma, the Otomi group held a press conference to demand meetings with INPI directors and other experts about the collection. It is not yet known if there has been any progress on this front.
Although the fate for the four lots of land in Mexico City (Londres 7, Guanajuato 200, Calzada Ignacio Zaragoza 1434 and Zacatecas 74) were the spark for the takeover, the list of demands has grown.
They now include a halt to renovations in the Otomi hometown of Santiago Mexquititlán and a halt to the Maya Train project in Yucatán.
The standoff continues.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
A former federal police commander who had collaborated closely with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and other United States authorities was sentenced to 10 years in prison in a U.S. federal court on Wednesday for trafficking cocaine.
Iván Reyes Arzate, known as La Reina (the Queen), pleaded guilty to drug trafficking conspiracy in October. He will only serve a further eight years behind bars, having already spent two years in prison awaiting trial.
Reyes described himself to the judge as “a man who does not run away from his responsibilities.” The judge expressed surprise that the prosecutors didn’t demand a longer sentence.
However, prosecutors assured the judge that Reyes wasn’t a collaborating witness. Reyes worked in the same period as ex-security minister Genaro García Luna, who is accused of taking multimillion-dollar bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. García is in the U.S. awaiting trial, which is expected to begin in October.
Reyes’ lawyer, Mark DeMarco, argued that five years would be an appropriate sentence given the length of previous punishments handed down to corrupt public servants.
As the former commander of the police force’s sensitive investigative unit (SIU), Reyes collaborated with a criminal group called El Seguimiento 39, which trafficked cocaine and marijuana to the United States on behalf of the Sinaloa Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas.
In October, Reyes admitted that he gave information to traffickers in 2016 in exchange for bribes. As the SIU commander, he learned that the U.S. investigators were tracking El Seguimiento 39 and accepted a US $290,000 bribe from criminals for information.
In 2016, he provided information that led to the torture and murder of a DEA informant in Miami. Reyes was at the meeting where the murder was planned, and along with two other people charged US $3 million for the information.
United States Attorney Breon Peace said in October that Reyes, who turned himself into U.S. authorities in 2017, and was convicted and jailed on a separate conspiracy charge in 2018, “forged a deplorable alliance with drug traffickers and betrayed not only the people of Mexico he was sworn to protect but also his law enforcement partners who put themselves at risk to disrupt the [El Seguimiento 39] cartel.”
Ray Donovan, the DEA special agent in charge of the criminal investigation, said in October that Reyes offered criminals a perfect environment. “Reyes Arzate turned a blind eye toward drug traffickers, enabling criminal enterprises to operate with impunity, while serving as a commander in the Mexican Federal Police … DEA and our law enforcement partners worked tirelessly to isolate and identify this bad seed and bring him to justice,” he said.
Striking teachers in Zacatecas took over government offices in the state capital on Wednesday one day after 5,000 members of the SNTE teachers union protested there.
The newspaper Sol de Zacatecas reported Wednesday morning that members of the SNTE took over government offices in the Zacatecas city Palace of Government building and took control of the headquarters of the Ministry of Finance and Education there. The newspaper also reported that teachers around the state had taken control of tax collection offices in several municipalities. On Wednesday afternoon, the state Finance Ministry announced on Twitter that only 19 of 58 remained open to the public.
The striking teachers are demanding a missing fortnightly salary payment for the second half of January and the payment of a bonus. One of the leaders of the protest, Óscar Castruita, the director of SNTE’s Section 58, said the money had been sent by federal authorities but then disappeared.
“Eight days have passed, and the second half of January has not been paid,” he said. “The unfortunate thing for everyone is that the single national compensation bonus has not been paid either. Where are the resources that the Treasury sent through the SEP [Education Ministry] to pay the bonus?”
Zacatecas Governor David Monreal said the state was in an economic crisis. He blamed his predecessors for not putting salaries under the direct responsibility of federal authorities and said the government hadn’t sent Zacatecas officials 500 million pesos (US $24 million) to cover the state’s debts.
On February 1, strike leader Oscar Castruita called for Zacatecas city teachers to stop working. Students in conventional public schools in the city have been without classes since February 2.
However, Zacatecas isn’t the only state where educators are dissenting. In Michoacán, members of the CNTE teachers union tried to block train tracks near Uruapan on February 1. They plan to march again in that city on Thursday.
Teachers have also been protesting in Hidalgo since January and are demanding 196 million pesos (US $9.6 million) in bonuses. They blocked streets and highways in Pachuca on February 3.
In Guerrero, students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college — the school attended by the 43 young men who disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero, in 2014 — attacked National Guardsmen with a semi-trailer at a toll booth on February 4.
In reaction to the Guerrero protests, President López Obrador called for non-violent demonstrations. “You have to fight for ideals, not for destruction. There should be no rebel without a cause,” he said at his Monday morning press conference.
The migratory birds from Canada live each year on the Michoacán side of Lake Chapala from October to April. Por un Cojumatlán LIbre y Digno/Facebook
Thousands of pelicans migrate from Canada to an island in Michoacán each year, attracted by the warmer weather and the generosity of the locals.
Petatán Island on Lake Chapala, 250 kilometers west of Morelia, plays host to as many as 20,000 American white pelicans for six months every year from October to April.
The town’s citizens have made their winged visitors feel welcome: they offer food to the birds and consider them a good omen, hoping that they’ll attract tourism to the area.
Locals say the migration phenomenon is almost identical to that of the monarch butterflies in eastern Michoacán. The huge birds can measure up to 1.75 meters in length and have a wingspan up to three meters wide.
The mayor of nearby Cojumatlán de Régules, Ana Manso, said she wanted the pelicans to enjoy the same fame as the monarch butterflies.
Feeding time. Adriana Hernández/Twitter
“We want the pelican phenomenon to be known at the state level, at the national level and at the world level because wherever you go, everyone knows the phenomenon of the monarch butterfly, but the pelicans are a bit forgotten,” she said.
However, Manso added that the birds were already a pull for visitors from nearby towns, helping to fill restaurants and boat tours over Lake Chapala to see them up close.
That economic benefit goes some way to explaining the generosity of local people. Petatán is a fishing community so the fish offal is served to the pelicans during the season, Manso said.
A local man who fillets fish, Enrique Martínez, estimated that one to two tonnes of fish offal were fed to the feathered visitors on a daily basis.
Martínez confirmed that the pelicans were welcome and that tourists would be given the same warm reception. “It doesn’t affect us at all, we like to have them [the pelicans] here … we want people to come and see them …” he said.
American white pelicans have the second largest average wingspan of any North American bird, after the California condor, which allows them to easily migrate. Their name in Spanish, pelícano borregón, takes the augmentative form of the word for sheep — borrego —due to their thick white plumage.
News report from earlier this month showing the pelicans in Petatán.
Diageo's Casamigos tequila: 'It’s not just shots and margaritas as it used to be many years ago.'
Tequila could become the United States’ best-selling liquor in the coming years if the strong sales growth it recorded in 2021 continues.
Data from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (Discus) shows that tequila and mezcal sales increased 30.1% last year to US $5.2 billion. All but 2% of that revenue came from tequila sales.
The agave-based spirits category was the second highest selling category after vodka, sales of which increased by a more modest 4.9% to $7.3 billion. Vodka has been the United States’ favorite liquor since the 1970s.
The tequila/mezcal category was also the second fastest growing spirit category after premixed cocktails, which recorded growth of 42.3% to total sales of $1.6 billion.
Discus spokeswoman Christine LoCascio said that premium tequilas are contributing to the strong growth of agave-based spirits in the United States.
“It’s not just for margaritas,” she said at the trade association’s annual economic briefing last week.
“There are so many high-end tequilas that you can sip and savor like many other high-end products, like whiskeys and cognacs and bourbons and high-end rums as well.”
The CEO of multinational beverage firm Diageo, whose brand portfolio includes Don Julio and Casamigos tequilas, made similar remarks during a recent earnings call.
“The category’s appeal across demographics is significant,” Ivan Menezes said.
“It has crossed over. The multicultural growth is very strong. It cuts across age segments, it cuts across gender. … It’s not just shots and margaritas as it used to be many years ago,” he said.
Menezes predicted that tequila sales will grow more quickly than the spirits sector as a whole during the next five to 10 years.
Diageo’s tequila sales increased 56% in the last three months of 2021 compared to the same period a year earlier.
LoCascio said that mezcal sales are also growing but noted that the spirit – made with any type of maguey – is “still a very small portion” of the broader agave category it shares with tequila, made exclusively from blue agave.
López-Gatell is accused of mismanaging the crisis.
President López Obrador has described a criminal complaint against Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell for alleged mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic as “irrational” and full of hate.
A group of relatives of people who lost their lives to COVID-19 filed a complaint against the coronavirus czar for alleged omissions in relation to the management of the coronavirus crisis.
A judge last month ordered the federal Attorney General’s Office to investigate López-Gatell to establish his responsibility for Mexico’s high COVID-19 death toll, which is currently just under 310,000.
Speaking at his regular news conference on Tuesday, López Obrador said that blaming the deputy minister for COVID deaths was “very irrational and involves a lot of hate.”
“We all know that it’s a pandemic. We’ve done everything to save lives. … We’re among the 10 countries with the most vaccines acquired and administered,” he said.
“… We were one of the first countries in the world to inform almost daily … about the pandemic,” López Obrador said, referring to the nightly press conferences led by López-Gatell for over a year.
“… I spoke with the president of Russia, the president of China, the president of the United States, the president of Cuba, the president of Argentina, we spoke with the foreign minister of India, with everyone, so that we didn’t lack vaccines,” he said.
López Obrador also said that Mexico – which ranks fifth in the world for total COVID-19 deaths behind the United States, Brazil, India and Russia – has recorded fewer per-capita fatalities than the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Paraguay.
“So [accusing López-Gatell of mismanagement] … is a great injustice, a smear campaign. …What will the Attorney General’s Office or a judge do? And it’s not just Dr. Hugo [managing the pandemic], it’s the president, it’s the health minister [Jorge Alcocer]. We would all go to jail, we’re all Hugo. But everything has to do with politicking,” López Obrador said.
The president also defended López-Gatell late last month, saying that his work during the pandemic had been “exceptional.”
“He’s a professional of the first order. It’s good fortune that we have a professional with so much knowledge in such difficult circumstances as these. He’s one of the best pandemic specialists in the world. He’s an authority [on the subject], a decent, honest person, an authentic public servant,” López Obrador said January 27.
The almost finished Copper Canyon Airport in Creel, Chihuahua. Government of Chihuahua.
An airport in Chihuahua is nearing completion after a 12-year delay.
The Aeropuerto Barrancas del Cobre (Copper Canyon Airport) in Creel, about 260 kilometers southwest of Chihuahua city, began construction in 2010 and was halted after progressing only about 5% due to legal action by indigenous communities.
However, the conflict has been resolved after the communities reached an agreement with state authorities, state Interior Minister César Jáuregui said.
The airport should be finished by April and could then open for operations by the end of December, according to Innovation and Economic Development Minister María Angélica Granados.
“The construction is being resumed … the airport is already being finished, but the control tower seems to need some work … it could even take the whole year for it to be in shape to operate at 100% … we are expecting the airport to start operating at the end of December or at the beginning of January 2023,” she said.
Innovation and Economic Development Minister María Angélica Granados.
Granados added that the legal impediment was resolved with communal landowners shortly after Governor María Eugenia Campos took office in September and described the initiatives that helped assuage the communities.
“We are working with the communities and the state government through the Innovation Ministry, the Rural Development Ministry and other ministries that have various programs to offer these communities, such as productive projects, soft loans, training and other initiatives. They can help not only the economic development in those communities but also contribute to the airport and expand tourism in the area,” she said.
The airport will be operated by the government of Chihuahua through a federal concession, but that responsibility could go to a third party. Granados said that 11 companies had expressed an interest in operating the terminal.
The former head of the Innovation and Economic Development Ministry, Antonio Fernández Domínguez, said in August that the airport would transport 80,000 passengers per year in the first five years of operation, which could grow to 250,000 passengers per year.
He added that the airport could operate flights to Monterrey, Nuevo León; Torreón, Coahuila; Juárez and Chihuahua city, as well as a tourist route from Los Cabos, Baja California Sur.
Fernández said at the time that a 2014 legal demand from the town of Repechique, obliging the Chihuahua government to pay them 65 million pesos (US $4.9 million in 2014) had been resolved, but it is unclear whether this was the demand that Jáuregui and Granados were referring to.
The community has been locked in battles over access to the fund for years, the newspaper Sin Embargo reported in a 2020 article about the murder of indigenous activist Antonio Montes Enríquez. Montes was a central figure in protesting the airport and had been planning a protest at the site over the issue when he was killed, the community’s legal representative Mónica Gretel Ruiz Anchondo told Sin Embargo.
Creel is in the Tarahumara Sierra, an area largely populated by the Rarámuri people. The town was historically dependent on logging but now has a mining industry and is a Pueblo Mágico (Magical Town) and tourist destination.
US Ambassador Salazar, second from left, at the La Toba solar energy project in Comondú, Baja California Sur.
The United States has once again criticized the federal government’s proposed electricity reform, warning that the continued use of fossil fuels will hurt both consumers and the economy.
The U.S. Embassy in Mexico published a statement Tuesday that noted that the U.S. government has repeatedly expressed concern about the energy sector proposal, which would guarantee 54% of the electricity market to the fossil fuel-dependent, state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and thus limit the participation of private renewable firms.
“Promoting the use of dirtier, outdated and more expensive technologies over efficient renewable alternatives would place both consumers and the economy in general at a disadvantage,” said the statement, published on the eve of U.S. climate czar John Kerry’s meeting with President López Obrador.
“We will listen to the points of view of the Mexican government on a range of energy issues, while we consult with United States private sector companies in order to better understand how to achieve our energy and climate objectives.”
The statement, which summarized Ambassador Ken Salazar’s visit to Baja California Sur on Monday and Tuesday, also said that “Mexico has abundant wind, sun, water resources, geothermal energy and essential minerals that provide big opportunities to lead the clean energy revolution.”
“… By partnering with the United States and Canada to design green energy technologies, and offering clean, accessible and reliable energy that companies increasingly need, North America can become the world’s clean energy power,” it said.
The statement quoted Ambassador Salazar, who has come under fire in recent days after contradicting the Biden administration by saying last week that López Obrador is “right” to seek energy sector reform.
“As the solar and wind facilities that we visited in Baja California Sur show, we can achieve incredible results by deploying the most recent technologies to advance to energy transition needed to combat climate change,” he said.
Ana López Mestre, general director of the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico (AmCham), also raised concerns about the government’s plans at an “open parliament” forum on Tuesday, warning the reform would jeopardize investor confidence, the transition to clean energy and the operation of North American supply chains.
Although López Obrador has championed the continued use of fossil fuels, he said Tuesday that Mexico would ramp up its clean energy production if the United States supports the endeavor by providing low-interest loans.
AmCham director Ana López warned the reform would sow distrust among investors.
“… It’s a matter of reaching agreements with the United States government,” the president said.
“… Receiving low-interest loans … would be an injection in favor of the environment. The only thing we want to do is strengthen the CFE because it dispatches energy to domestic consumers and guarantees that prices don’t go up excessively,” he said.
López Obrador, Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard and other federal officials will meet Wednesday with Kerry, the United States special presidential envoy for climate, who is in Mexico for the second time in less than four months.
A statement issued by the U.S. Department of State Monday said he would “engage with government counterparts and accelerate cooperation on the climate crisis.”
Any loans provided by the United States could be used to fund the modernization of CFE’s aging hydroelectricity plants.
López Obrador said Wednesday that the United States’ funding of anti-graft group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) would also be a topic for discussion in his meeting Wednesday with Salazar.
“… Today when I see the ambassador I’m going to remind him to tell us why the United States government gives money to [businessman] Claudio X.González’s group,” he said.
The federal government sent a diplomatic note to the United States last May, asking it to explain why it has provided funding to MCCI, a civil society organization that has been critical of López Obrador and his administration.
AMLO has complained about not receiving a response, although the U.S. government published a memorandum last June that outlined its commitment to tackling corruption and its intention to increase support to international partners committed to its elimination.
During a meeting with López Obrador the same month, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris reportedly asked him to not interfere in the work of NGOs such as MCCI and press freedom advocacy organization Article 19, both of which have drawn the president’s ire.
At his Wednesday morning press conference, López Obrador railed against MCCI president Maria Amparo Casar and journalist Carmen Aristegui, who he recently accused of misleading people during her long media career.
He accused Amparo of defamation and labeled Aristegui “dishonest.”
“[There are] dishonest journalists like Carmen Aristegui, journalists who are not just dishonest but also corrupt and mercenary, capable of inventing any situation, like [Carlos] Loret de Mola,” he said.
MCCI and Loret de Mola recently collaborated on an investigation into the living arrangements in the United States of AMLO’s 40-year-old son. Their exposé contrasted the luxury in which José Ramón López Beltrán apparently lives with his father’s exhortations for people to live a life of austerity.
