Salmeron is out, Rodríguez is in for ambassadorial nomination.
The government of Panama rejected the federal government’s nominated ambassador to that country, President López Obrador revealed Tuesday.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced last month that Pedro Agustín Salmerón, a National Autonomous University-trained historian, would be Mexico’s next ambassador to the Central American nation.
But the appointment was condemned by feminist collectives and others because Salmerón, a former professor at the Autonomous Technical Institute of Mexico (ITAM), is accused of sexual harassment.
López Obrador told reporters at his regular news conference that the Panamanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the academic’s appointment.
“As if it was the Holy Inquisition, the foreign affairs minister of Panama [Erika Mouynes] didn’t agree [with the appointment] because they opposed it at ITAM,” he said.
“… She asked us not to send the approval request. I really regret it because [Panama] is the land of [leftist dictator/supreme military leader] Omar Torrijos, who returned sovereignty to Panama,” López Obrador said before recommending the Graham Greene book Getting To Know The General.
The president claimed that political scientist and columnist Denise Dresser led a “lynching campaign” against Salmerón.
He said that former Morena party senator Jesusa Rodríguez – an activist and actress known for controversial statements and political stunts – would be nominated instead.
“She will be the ambassador of Mexico in Panama if the government of Panama accepts her, if it gives its consent,”López Obrador said.
He said he will seek to appoint Salmerón – who wrote to the president to express his “willingness” to turn down the ambassador position amid what he described as a “media lynching” – to another government position.
“We’re going to look for a way to use Pedro’s knowledge in another field, let’s see if the conservatives don’t get angry,” López Obrador said.
“I would really like him to help us with everything to do with the [national] archives, I’m very concerned about leaving them well … protected because since the [2017] earthquake [the National Archives] building has been [in a] poor [state],” he said.
“… I would like him to be my advisor to make … a story for young people about electoral fraud in Mexico – it would be really great, all the frauds, at least 100 years of frauds,” López Obrador said, adding that Salmerón could be appointed to undertake “any other historic activity he would like to accept.”
The first of 32 assemblies to discuss new textbooks was held this week in Veracruz.
Words and concepts considered “neoliberal” by the federal government look set to be scrapped from new textbooks for primary and middle school students.
In a document distributed to attendees of a series of meetings on the design of free textbooks for basic education students, the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) advises against the use of words and concepts such as “educational quality,” “competition,” “knowledge society,” “efficiency” and “productivity.”
The SEP asserts that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), non-governmental organizations and “groups close to the business sector” intervened in educational reforms carried out over the past 30 years and succeeded in introducing “the concept of quality to measure the performance of the education system.”
In a 157-page document, downloadable via the scanning of a QR code, the ministry also insinuates contempt for seemingly innocuous words such as “equity,” “coverage” and “graduation.”
President López Obrador frequently rails against what he describes as Mexico’s “neoliberal period” – the 36 years before he took office in late 2018.
Speaking at the first textbook design assembly, held on Tuesday, the SEP’s director of educational materials said that education needs to be conceived in an alternative way in order to put an end to “the neoliberal dream.”
Marx Arriaga Navarro, who has previously told textbook authors to “eliminate authoritarian discourse” from existing texts, asserted that the OECD sought to have educators removed from the process of designing education policy and content in Mexico.
Its board, Arriaga claimed, said: “’The education reform is too important for the future of Mexico … to leave it to educators …’”
“But, what do you know? We’re not infants. … We will not accept education policy being imposed on us. … These assemblies are the first step toward completing the guiding documents that the country needs,” he said.
Arriaga said that a “different way” of educating must be developed and claimed that previous governments misled the nation.
“They promised us that if the companies did well the workers would do well and today we see that’s not the case. Not even money brings happiness and this excessive industrial development and this free market [model] they proposed is destroying the environment, morals and security,” he said.
The Education ministry’s Marx Arriaga said education needs to be conceived in an alternative way in order to put an end to ‘the neoliberal dream.’
Arriaga also criticized the system of educational evaluation and diagnostic testing designed by previous governments.
Education experts who spoke with the newspaper El Universal predicted that nothing good will come out of the SEP textbook design assemblies.
“… Those who are going to attend are supporters of [the ruling party] Morena, of [Education Minister] Delfina Gómez. … [They’ll be] factious, partisan meetings. The only thing we can expect from these assemblies is that trash, monstrosities that could … cause tremendous damage in the education of children and adolescents will come out,” said Gilberto Guevara Niebla, director of the Institute of Educational Research at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara.
The former deputy education minister, a leader of the student movement that was violently repressed by the government at the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, charged that assemblies such as those organized by the SEP are not the correct forums for the development of new textbooks.
The content of textbooks is “not resolved in assemblies,” Guevara said. “That’s the problem. … Scientists don’t meet in assemblies to create new knowledge, it’s absurd.”
The staging of the assemblies is nothing more than “a vulgar maneuver to create the appearance that the SEP is doing something when in reality it has done very little,” he added.
Guevara also said it’s absurd that the SEP considers words such as “quality, competition, performance and evaluation” to be neoliberal terms.
Similarly, the former chief of the now-defunct National Education Evaluation Institute said that “competition” and “quality” are not “concepts invented by any neoliberal current.”
“They’re concepts that have been used for years to refer to fundamental education processes,” Eduardo Backhoff Escudero said.
“All this is part of … a narrative … that they’re making a real change in education, when what they’re [actually] doing is just changing words,” he said.
Carlos Ornelas, an academic at Mexico City’s Metropolitan Autonomous University who has a doctorate in education from Stanford University, claimed that the SEP has already decided on the content for new textbooks and curriculums and is only using the assemblies to “legitimize” it.
“There is already a direction [for education in Mexico] but there is no clear strategy,” he said.
At least 11 people were injured during protests by militant teachers in Michoacán on Tuesday.
The radical wing of the CNTE teachers union, Poder de Base (Power Base), has attempted to block train tracks in Morelia, Pátzcuaro and Uruapan since Monday, attacking security forces with rockets, sticks, stones and pipes.
Most of the violence was concentrated in Caltzontzin on the outskirts of Uruapan, where at least 11 police and National Guardsmen were hurt — two seriously — and taken to hospital. Security forces numbered around 350 and protesters were about 400-strong.
After being repelled from the train tracks, some of the militants burned tires and tried to block the Siglo 21 highway near Tiripetío, 25 kilometers southwest of Morelia, the exact location of another clash on January 17, but were cleared by police.
The protesters were demanding the payment of wages, consultation before any changes to pensions and jobs to be automatically awarded to teachers who have completed their training, a perennial demand by teaching students and the dissident CNTE union.
🚨 #AMPLIACIÓN | Al menos 20 uniformados han resultado lesionados en el enfrentamiento de profesores agremiados a la #CNTE con elementos de la @GN_MEXICO_.
They were also unhappy over the appointment of a new director of indigenous education, the newspaper Excélsior reported.
The state Education Ministry said it was up to date with payments to teachers.
The state Public Security Ministry (SSP) said in a statement that only peaceful protests would be tolerated. “The SSP emphasizes that it endorses total respect for free demonstration framed within legality, which doesn’t affect third parties. [The ministry] emphasizes that illegal acts masked as demonstrations which try to destabilize Michoacán society will not be allowed.”
Blockades are a common tactic for dissatisfied teachers and teachers-to-be in Michoacán and other states: members of the CNTE blocked tracks for 91 days last year, costing businesses an estimated 50 million pesos per day (US $2.5 million at the exchange rate at the time).
Sick of the rat race in California, the O'Gradys moved their family to San Pancho, Nayarit. They currently live in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato.
When you think about who is moving to Mexico from the United States, you probably think of retirees seeking a warmer and more affordable place to live out their golden years.
While there is certainly a large population of senior snowbirds from the U.S. that live full- or part-time in Mexico, the truth is that most U.S. citizens moving to and living in Mexico today are younger people — mostly the children and spouses of Mexican citizens who have returned to their family’s home country.
According to Andrew Selee, President of the Migration Policy Institute, of the approximately 1.5 to 1.8 million U.S. citizens living in Mexico today, at least 550,000 are children of Mexicans who have returned, according to Mexican census numbers.
But there is also a growing number of young families from the U.S. with fewer direct ties to Mexico that are making the move or are already settled in the country. There is no official count of the number of American families living in Mexico today, but if their obvious presence in communities across the country is any indication, it is surely in the thousands, if not tens of thousands.
San Miguel de Allende-based relocation consultant Katie O’Grady has helped hundreds of individuals, couples and families plan, research and make the move to Mexico. She says there are myriad reasons American families move here, but it all boils down to improving their quality of life.
“Living in Mexico has restored my faith in humanity,” says Kimberly Miles, who moved to Mexico from the US in 2018.
“The main driving force for families is their overall desire to have a life well-lived, quality family time and true connections with people — to be able to walk around their community and stop and literally smell the flowers, have conversations with people and make that personal connection,” she said.
“Americans tend to move because they like the pace in Mexico — it’s a less frenetic society. They also like the sense of community. Family is tight. Neighbors are tight. There is a code about relationships between people here that Americans find attractive and refreshing and different from where they came from,” said Selee.
As an American citizen who moved from San Diego to Mexico in 2012 with her husband, Frank, and young twins, O’Grady has experienced firsthand the transformation that can occur when families leave the rat race and create more expansive, balanced and connected lives in Mexico.
Back in San Diego, Frank was a firefighter whose work required him to be away from home and in life- and health-threatening situations for days at a time. Katie was an accomplished K-12 Spanish teacher who retired early a few years after their twins were born to homeschool them.
Reflecting back, with all that she and Frank were balancing in their lives in the fast-paced environment of Southern California, O’Grady said, “We were like two ships passing in the night.”
The O’Gradys spent most of their precious time off together back then in Baja California, where they lived simply from their RV, played on the beach and finally had a chance to unwind.
“From an early age, my kids had a sprinkling of what life in Mexico looks like. For them, it always represented [that] mom and dad aren’t stressed,” O’Grady said. “Mexico always had this very positive connotation to it. It always represented relaxation, concentrated family time and adventure.”
As someone who grew up near the Mexican border, visiting Mexico frequently and having a grandfather who was the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration in the 1940s — a time when border relations were more convivial than confrontational — O’Grady already had deep connections to Mexico. So when she and Frank dreamed of one day creating a different life for their family outside the U.S., Mexico was a natural fit.
In 2012, when their twins were eight years old, they made the move, first landing in San Pancho, Nayarit.
“We dove in. And we haven’t looked back with any regrets. Of course, we’ve had hard times, bumps in the road and inconveniences that weren’t expected. But that’s going to happen anywhere. I’d much rather be doing life on this side of the border any day,” said O’Grady.
She started blogging about their family’s experience immigrating to and living in Mexico, which grew in popularity and attracted the attention of others looking to make the move. In 2014, she launched her relocation consulting business, focusing on the Puerto Vallarta coastal corridor and San Miguel de Allende, where she lives now.
“From an early age, my kids had a sprinkling of what life in Mexico looks like. For them, it always represented [that] mom and dad aren’t stressed,” Katie O’Grady said.O’Grady says she has seen different waves of interest in moving to Mexico — first with the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, and more recently with the pandemic.
“The pandemic has been a huge impetus behind the current uptick in requests for my services. Every day there are more people,” O’Grady said. “The biggest difference I see now is inquiries are coming not just from the U.S. but also from Canada, Australia and Ireland. Before, 90% of my inquiries were from the U.S. Then, it was about political discomfort. Now, interest is a direct result of the pandemic.”
Selee also sees the pandemic as a catalyst for greater immigration into Mexico.
“In the COVID world, we learned that so many jobs can be done outside of offices. That is only going to encourage more people to look at where they want to live for quality of life. I think we have seen accelerated immigration to Mexico because of the pandemic,” he said.
But even before the pandemic, populations of American immigrants throughout Mexico were growing. Not just among retirees, two-parent families, couples and individuals but also among single parents such as Kimberly Miles.
It was her longtime wish to live abroad in a Spanish-speaking country that originally drew Miles and her four-year-old son from Alexandria, Virginia, to Puerto Vallarta — that, and her desire to create a different life, one that would allow her more time with her son, immerse them both in a new culture and give her a chance to start her own marketing consulting business.
Miles left her corporate job of 15 years and moved to Mexico in 2018. She is now her own boss, catering mostly to single moms like herself looking to launch their own businesses. She is also the creator and administrator of the Facebook Group Single Moms in Mexico.
Miles says her life in Mexico is markedly different than it was in Virginia. “The stress level is completely different. As a single mom in the northern Virginia area, it is extremely difficult,” she said.
“Not only is it expensive but there is also so much pressure to be a certain thing, do a certain thing, go to certain places and act a certain way. Here, I’ve found that’s not the case. I can be more relaxed and do the things I enjoy.”
Instead of rushing out of the house at 7 a.m. to get to work and get her son to school on time, only to turn around at the end of the day to pick him up and not get home until 6:30 p.m., now Miles works from home and clocks off at 2 p.m. when her son is done at school.
“Living here has provided me with a much better quality of life in terms of motherhood. Plus, I would not have had the opportunity to build a business had we stayed in Virginia,” she said.
Similar to what O’Grady and Selee have observed and experienced, the strong sense of community here — a different experience than she had in the U.S. — is what Miles finds so attractive about living in Mexico.
Mexico is increasingly an immigrant society, says Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute.
“Living in Mexico has restored my faith in humanity. People walk down the streets and say good morning to complete strangers. People are willing to go out of their way to help. When you see someone’s car broken down on the side of the road, people come out and help. I’ve never seen that back at home,” she said.
While moving to Mexico can provide harried families and parents a slower, more connected life rich with new cultural experiences, it is not without its challenges. Among the biggest are one’s ability to assimilate and adapt to things like a new language, unfamiliar social norms and a different sense of time. That’s not always easy for those conditioned in the customer-is-always-right, hurry-up culture of the United States.
“I tell people — wherever you are, there you will be. You are taking that wherever you go. A lot of people move to Mexico and it’s not the place for them,” Miles said. “It’s not the place, it’s you. Unless you understand yourself, you are not going to get what you are expecting.”
“The real opportunity,” said Selee about living in Mexico, “is integrating into local society and taking advantage of getting to know the country. There are Americans who move to Mexico and stay in American communities. Any immigrant is going to want to find people who have the same background, and you don’t want to give that up. But at the same time, you want to meet people from the country you are settling in and become part of the texture of the community you are living in. Mexico is increasingly an immigrant society. It’s ok to be one of those people.”
“Mexico is not for everybody, but it is for a lot of people,” said O’Grady. She advises families considering the move to not live in fear and figure out a way to re-create and reinvent their lives.
“If there is a little whisper knocking on the door of your heart saying, ‘See what else is out there,’ do it,” she said. “None of us are trees. We can get up and move. We don’t have to stay stuck anywhere – and that includes in Mexico.
“Try it all out; this is a big, diverse, magnificent, beautiful country — so get out and see it.”
Did you recently move your family here to Mexico? We’re interested to hear about your experience in the comments.
Debbie Slobe is a writer and communications strategist based in Chacala, Nayarit. She blogs at Mexpatmama.com and is a senior program director at Resource Media. Find her on Instagram and Facebook.
State Workers Social Security Institute chief Zenteno.
The head of a federal government social security and health care provider has attracted criticism after revealing that he was being treated for COVID-19 with homeopathy.
“… I tested positive for COVID-19. I’m fine with mild symptoms, I’m already under homeopathic medical treatment,” State Workers Social Security Institute (Issste) general director Pedro Zenteno Santaella announced on Twitter Sunday.
Infectious disease specialist Alejandro Macías retweeted Zenteno’s post with an accompanying message that asserted “there is no such thing as homeopathic treatment against COVID-19.”
“Homeopathy is water with sugar,” he added.
In a subsequent post, Macías “clarified” that homeopathy is water with sugar and “a few drops of alcohol … so that it tastes like medicine.”
“But in the end it’s still a placebo,” he wrote.
Former health minister and current federal Deputy Salomón Chertorivski also retweeted the Issste chief’s post with his own commentary.
“Everyone is the master of their own body and health. However, that one of the heads of public health is putting forward homeopathy as a way to treat a potentially lethal disease is concerning. Hopefully, he gets better soon. Hopefully, he’ll also value medical science,” he wrote.
Virologist Andreu Comas wrote on Twitter that the poor state of Mexico’s public health system is evidenced by having an anthropologist as the head of the National Institute of Health for Well-Being (Insabi), a homeopath as the chief of Issste and an “anti-vaxxer” as health minister.
Insabi director Juan Antonio Ferrer formerly worked at the National Institute of Anthropology and History, Zenteno describes himself on Twitter as a surgeon and National Polytechnic Institute-trained homeopath and Health Minister Jorge Alcocer has recommended against offering COVID-19 vaccines to children.
Though August set a record in remittances for the year's eighth month, the amount sent fell 12.5% in real terms from August 2022. (Gobierno de México)
Remittance payments topped the US $50 billion mark in 2021, the Bank of México reported on Tuesday.
The year’s total was $51.59 billion, a record breaking sum that is 27% higher than in 2020.
Workers abroad were slated to push the total over the 50 billion landmark after sending $46.83 billion from January through November: they did so comfortably with a further $4.76 billion in December, a 30.4% increase in annual terms.
In 2020, the total value of remittance payments was more than $10 billion lower, at $40.61 billion.
Remittance is the term for money sent home by Mexican nationals from outside of the country, typically in the United States or Canada. Many remittances are from people working and living outside Mexico and sending money home to relatives, but some experts speculate that an unknown percentage of remittances are part of money laundering schemes by criminals in Mexico.
The value of payments also grew in 2021: the average remittance was for $378, 11.1% higher than in 2020, when it was $340.
In 2020, there were 119.4 million transfers. In 2021, they climbed to 136.5 million.
Jalisco, Michoacán and Guanajuato were the main recipients of payments from January–December.
President López Obrador has thanked the 38 million Mexicans in the United States for their contribution to the Mexican economy through remittance payments on various occasions. He has described those migrants as heroes and estimated that their payments benefit around 10 million families.
Remittances are Mexico’s second largest source of foreign currency after automotive exports.
An economic analyst at Banco Base, Gabriela Siller, predicted that in 2022 remittance payments would continue to grow, projecting a 13.7% increase. That would mean a 2022 total of around $58.6 billion.
Passengers board a bus on Guadalajara's new transit system.
The biggest rapid transit bus system in Mexico opened for service on Saturday.
Mi Macro Periférico (My Ring-road Bus) in Guadalajara can transport as many as 300,000 passengers a day around three-quarters of the city’s ring road.
It runs westward from Belisario Domínguez Avenue in the north to the Chapala highway in the south.
The 41.5 kilometer route cost almost 9 billion pesos (US $440 million) to build. It consists of 42 stations and 38 pedestrian overpasses, which have ramps and elevators. Thirty-four of the stations have bicycle racks, bathrooms and breast feeding units and free internet is available to users.
The new rapid transit system will connect with another bus system called Mi Macro Calzada, metro Lines 1 and 3, and electric buses to the airport and to a university in Tonalá. It also provides access to transfers to Guadalajara center, Zapopan, Tlaquepaque, Tlajomulco and Tonalá.
Governor Enrique Alfaro said the new system, which eliminated a car lane, was necessary after years of negligence. “Today those who complain that we are taking a lane away from cars are still arguing the same absurdity … traffic is not generated by public transport works, traffic is not generated by bicycle paths. Traffic is generated by [public] works that were done in this city for decades, which prioritized cars over people,” he said.
More than 180,000 people used the new system in the first two days of operation when the service was free, the newspaper El Universal reported.
Alfaro said the service’s popularity far outstripped what was previously available. “It is evident … that on the first day of operations … the demand of users increased by 50%,” compared to the previous route, he said.
Alfaro’s Mi Movilidad (My Mobility) program has concentrated on expanding transport options with investment in the metro, a city train line, city bicycles and other rapid transit bus systems.
'We're in the descent phase,' said the deputy health minister on Tuesday.
The fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic is on the wane, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Tuesday.
“We started the week with a reduction [in case numbers]. Estimated cases in the fifth week of the year, which is the one we’re in now, dropped 31%,” he told President López Obrador’s regular news conference.
The decline is consistent with several other signs of a receding fourth wave, he said, citing reductions in hospital occupancy levels in most states, lower absenteeism rates among workers and a falling COVID-19 positivity rate.
“There are various signs that show us that we’ve reached and passed the peak of this fourth wave of COVID-19 in Mexico, dominated by the omicron variant,” López-Gatell said.
“We’re now in the descent phase. What’s expected is that this descent phase will be maintained in the following weeks, possibly at a pace similar to the ascent. … As always [we’ll be] monitoring any change in the trend in order to report it in a timely manner if that is the case,” he said.
The estimated active case count stood at 230,308 after the Health Ministry reported 12,521 new infections on Monday. It was frequently above 300,000 in January.
Mexico’s accumulated case tally is 4.94 million while the official COVID-19 death toll is 306,091.
López-Gatell said that hospitalization rates were falling in 25 of 32 states. He presented data that showed that 47% of general care beds and 29% of those with ventilators are currently occupied.
The deputy minister acknowledged that COVID-related deaths are currently trending upwards, although fatalities during the fourth wave are far lower than in previous waves.
He stressed that most people who have been hospitalized or died during the current wave were not vaccinated or only got one shot of a two-dose vaccine.
More than 80% of Mexican adults are fully vaccinated and the federal government is currently administering booster shots to people aged 40 and over.
The dogs appeared to be enjoying their run along a highway in Monterrey, Nuevo León, oblivious to the officer in the car behind them.
A transit police officer in Nuevo León won plaudits for ushering dogs along a highway near Monterrey on Sunday.
In a video shared by Monterrey police on Twitter, a transit police vehicle with sirens on is seen driving down the left-hand lane of a busy three-lane highway. Just in front of it are four apparently stray dogs not wearing collars and running in a pack.
The transit officer is not chasing the dogs but is driving excessively slowly behind them to protect them from the surrounding traffic. The dogs are running happily in a leisurely fashion while already heavy traffic is slowed yet further behind the police vehicle.
The police department singled out the officer for the act with a Twitter post. “We make a huge recognition to the traffic and highway officer … for his work to protect the lives of these dogs that were circulating on the highway yesterday.”
One Twitter user showed his appreciation for the officer’s caring attitude. “The types of cops that act like that are the ones who are admired and respected,” Erik Hdez wrote.
Hacemos un enorme reconocimiento al oficial de Tránsito y Vialidad de la Secretaría de Seguridad y Protección de la Ciudadanía, por su labor de proteger la vida de estos perritos que estaban circulando por la carretera nacional el día de ayer alrededor de las 3:15 p.m. pic.twitter.com/cmOpvF21eS
— Seguridad y Protección a la Ciudadanía (@SSPCMonterrey) January 27, 2022
However, another user said authorities should do more to manage the problem of abandoned pets and called for sterilization. “Those beautiful little angels wouldn’t have to wander the streets if we were aware and adopted, instead of [bought], and if the government gave support to sterilize thousands of puppies and kittens,” she wrote.
Interior of the home lived in by the president's son, José Ramón López and his wife, Carolyn Adams, in Houston, Texas.
Screen capture
President López Obrador has defended the integrity of his government after a news outlet and an anti-corruption group revealed that his eldest son lives in an expensive home in Houston, Texas, and drives a car worth almost US $70,000.
Latinus and Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) reported that José Ramón López Beltrán, 40, and his wife Carolyn Adams live in a new house in the northwest of Houston that could be worth as much as $948,475.
The house is registered in the name of Adams, a Brazilian-American woman who has worked in Mexico as a lobbyist for an energy company.
The couple previously lived in a luxurious home north of Houston worth an estimated $1 million, according to Latinus and MCCI. The owner of that property until at least 2020 was Keith L. Schilling, a high-ranking executive with Baker Hughes, an oil sector company that has current contracts with state oil company Pemex worth over US $150 million.
Latinus and MCCI also reported that López Beltrán drives a Mercedes-Benz SUV purchased in Adams’ name.
Carolyn Adams and José Ramón López Beltrán. Twitter
The entities noted that since taking office in late 2018, López Obrador has called on others to follow the example he sets and live a life of austerity. The president has made combatting corruption a central aim of his administration and has implemented a range of austerity measures to free up funds for social programs and public infrastructure projects.
López Obrador said on Monday that his sons — he has three adult sons and one teenager — don’t have any influence in his government. “No contract is given to any recommended person,” he added.
AMLO said that his eldest son’s wife apparently has money but asserted that her wealth “has nothing to do with the government.”
“… We’re not the same,” the president declared, seeking to differentiate his administration from previous governments he frequently accuses of being corrupt.
López Obrador accused journalist Carlos Loret de Mola — who reported on AMLO’s son for Latinus – of being a “mercenary.”
“He made a scandal because he thinks we’re the same. … He was and continues to be at the service of the mafia of power. He was capable of participating in a television setup of a French citizen, he was a very good friend of [former security minister and accused criminal Genaro] García Luna and, of course, [former president Felipe] Calderón,” he said.
The house is registered in Adams’ name. A Brazilian-American woman, she has worked in Mexico as an energy company lobbyist.
“… He was capable of inventing the thing about … Frida Sofía,” López Obrador added, referring to a girl who was supposedly trapped in the rubble of a school in Mexico City after a powerful 2017 earthquake but in fact didn’t exist.
“… Loret de Mola … is a bully, a mercenary without ideals, without principles,” he said.
The journalist subsequently said on Twitter that the president had insulted and slandered him but “didn’t refute a single word about the mansions and luxuries of his son.”
López Obrador attributed the Latinus/MCCI report to government opponents who are unhappy with his administration’s policies. He has clashed previously with both MCCI and Loret de Mola, who presents a YouTube program for Latinus. The anti-graft group and the journalist have exposed alleged corruption within the federal government and involving members of his family.
“… We’re moving ahead with the transformation of Mexico, even though Claudio [X. González], those who felt they were the owners of Mexico, the bought or hired press, organic intellectuals and go-betweens of the regime of corruption don’t like it,” López Obrador said Monday.
González is the founder of MCCI and an outspoken government critic.
The president also said that not everyone with money is “evil.”
“There are those who made their wealth with effort, with work in accordance with the law. They deserve respect. I’m against ill-gotten wealth — corruption annoys me, corruption angers me,” López Obrador said.
The president late last year defended his adult sons after an investigation asserted that a cacao plantation they own in Tabasco benefited from Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life), the federal government’s allegedly corruption-plagued tree-planting employment program.
