AMLO declares Mexico an ally to US in movement to confront climate change

October 19, 2021

The president waves to onlookers during a visit to Chiapas Monday with John Kerry, far left.

Mexico is an ally of the United States in the fight against climate change, President López Obrador declared Monday before U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry.

“President Biden has an ally in the defense of climate policy to confront climate change and to guarantee life, the survival of all human beings,” López Obrador said during a ceremony in Palenque, Chiapas, after accompanying Kerry on a visit to a parcel of community land where the federal government’s tree-planting employment program, Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life), is operating.

“We’re your allies in the defense of the environment and in a very special way an ally of you, Mr. John Kerry,” he said.

“We’re going to support the approach John Kerry is leading … to improve the environment, … [and] to confront climate change [and] global warming,” said López Obrador, who has been criticized for his own efforts in the area.

“And as he has said, planting [trees] – reforestation, is fundamental. In this region, just in Chiapas, trees are being planted on 200,000 hectares and work is provided for 80,000 farmers. We can do this in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador; … we’re willing to help and the United States government also has the will for programs like this to expand and to confront the migratory phenomenon in this way.”

López Obrador also touted other government efforts to combat climate change, including plans to boost the production of hydroelectricity and not increase oil production beyond 2 million barrels per day.

In his official remarks, Kerry heaped praise on the Sembrando Vida program – despite claims it is in fact causing deforestation, and avoided criticism of López Obrador’s predilection for fossil fuels and his proposed electricity reform which, if passed, would adversely affect privately owned renewable energy projects.

Reaching net zero emissions by 2050 “cannot be achieved without reforestation and dealing with deforestation,” he said.

“Whenever I talk about the challenge of the climate crisis, yes I talk about energy and energy choices but I always talk about nature based solutions. Almost a third of Mexico is covered by forest and President López Obrador is appropriately focused on how Mexico is going to make its contribution by paying attention to that. Success in this area of reforestation could contribute as much as one-third of global mitigation [of emissions] by 2030 and even more in the decades after that,” Kerry said.

“… All of us in the world need to focus on what President López Obrador is doing, and trying to do, and fighting to do,” the special envoy said.

“And it’s not just the reforestation, … [Sembrando Vida is] a program that’s focused on people, on people’s lives, on work, on the ability to be able to stay where you live, and the ability to stay connected to the land,” Kerry said.

“… We recognize that halting deforestation and restoring ecosystems is critical for reasons that go far beyond the climate – the livelihoods of people who depend on the forests, the sustainability of their lives and that dependency, the wellbeing of indigenous peoples who steward the lands, the biodiversity and the water on which we all depend.”

Kerry, who also toured the Palenque archaeological site with López Obrador, said that Mexico has already shown itself to be a leader on climate issues, noting that it was the first developing country to produce a climate action law and the first developing country to come up with nationally determined contributions – efforts by individual countries to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

He also said that in President Biden’s vision there is a possibility of much greater effort and cooperation between Mexico, Canada and the United States on climate issues.

“Transitioning to a net zero economy is the greatest economic opportunity of our lives,” Kerry said before asserting that “Mexico’s industrial base … absolutely stands to benefit from the energy transition.”

“For example, when we switch from gasoline to electrified vehicles, there are going to be a lot of good paying jobs here in Mexico because of the connection already of the automobile industry and our two countries,” he said.

With reports from Milenio, El Universal, Reforma and AP

6 killed in attack in bar in Morelia, Michoacán

MND Staff

October 18, 2021

The Cantina 25 bar in Morelia, Michoacán.

Six people were killed and two more injured in an attack at a bar in Morelia, Michoacán, Monday morning.

Armed men approached the Cantina 25 bar in the east of the city at around 3:30 a.m and started shooting at people outside. Three people died outside the bar, and five others were taken to the hospital, three of whom later died.

The attack was caught by a CCTV camera, and the footage has been shared on social media, news site Infobae reported. In the footage, two armed men arrive in a white van and begin to shoot, seemingly indiscriminately, into a crowd of about 20 people outside the bar.

Seconds after the shooting began, a pickup truck and a white car can be seen arriving in the video. A man who exited the white car can be seen shooting from close range into the crowd off-camera. The three men then can be seen fleeing in the vehicles.

Authorities seized a vehicle without license plates at the scene, as well as another vehicle abandoned about 1 kilometer away.

The victims have not yet been identified, the state Attorney General’s Office said.

Cantina 25 appears to have been flouting COVID-19 restrictions by keeping the bar open past 1:00 a.m. The bar has been sanctioned on several occasions for not respecting mandated business hours or sanitary protocols but is still in operation, the newspaper El Universal reported.

Morelia is the municipality with the highest rate of homicides in Michoacán.

With reports from El Universal and Infobae

Energy minister quells refinery uprising, promising workers 8% pay hike

MND Staff

October 18, 2021

Workers line up for their shift at the Tabasco refinery.

Laborers at the construction site of the new Pemex refinery who walked off the job last week to protest pay and working conditions appear to have been appeased by a promise of an 8% raise.

Some 5,000 workers employed by the construction company ICA Fluor downed tools at the site of the Dos Bocas refinery on the Tabasco coast.

But the laborers were back at work Sunday after Energy Minister Rocío Nahle pledged to increase their wages by 8% starting this Friday at the latest, according to the newspaper Milenio.

The news website Emeequis reported that the Energy Ministry, which is managing the Dos Bocas project, also committed to limiting shift lengths to no more than 12 hours. ICA workers had complained that their work hours were extended without additional remuneration.

One worker who spoke with Milenio on the condition of anonymity said that he and his colleagues were not entirely convinced the pay rise will become reality.

“They promised us 8% but let’s see if it happens. … Sometimes they tell lies to control the matter,” he said.

Emeequis said it spoke with two leaders of the Autonomous Federation of Workers and Employees of the State of Tabasco who said all Dos Bocas workers will get pay increases of 5-10% if they return to work and commit to not going on strike again.

The pledge to increase workers’ pay came after three presumed ICA employees were taken into custody on weapons charges during a confrontation at the Dos Bocas site. They are now imprisoned in Tabasco awaiting trial.

Ricardo Hernández Daza, head of the Mexican Workers Confederation in Tabasco, claimed that the conflict between workers and ICA Fluor was led by “pseudo union members” who were manipulated by Susana Prieto Terrazas, a federal deputy with the ruling Morena party. Hernández said that Prieto, who he described as a “troublemaker,” met with a group of workers on October 9 in Paraíso, the municipality where the refinery is being built.

A clash between state police and workers at the construction site last Wednesday during which 10 of the latter were injured was organized by “unidentified and unrecognized people,” he said.

In turn, Prieto told Milenio that Hernández is “a corrupt union leader” in cahoots with a corrupt company. “… It’s a labor conflict matter due to the low salaries that ICA Fluor pays,” she said.

In contrast, Nahle and President López Obrador claimed that the recent job action was not motivated by low pay.

“It’s a matter of [union] leaders, they’re fighting for a contract. They should behave themselves because the workers are not being paid poorly, they have all their benefits and fair salaries,” López Obrador said last week.

Companies collaborating with the government to build the new refinery are under pressure to meet a July 2022 deadline for its completion.

The government announced in May 2019 that it had scrapped the bidding process to find a builder for the new refinery on the grounds that the bids were too high and the project would take too long. Instead, Pemex and the Energy Ministry took charge of the project and the government pledged it wouldn’t cost more than US $8 billion.

However, the refinery is now expected to cost at least $8.9 billion due to a range of cost increases, even before the promised pay hike for workers is taken into account.

With reports from Milenio and Eme Equis

Illegal logging by organized crime has depleted 15% of the country

MND Staff

October 18, 2021

Deforestation in Mexico — 24 million cubic meters of wood are used per year in Mexico. Eight million of that amount is believed to come from mostly illegal logging. CONAFOR

More than 300,000 square kilometers of forested land – about 15% of Mexico’s territory – have been depleted due to illegal logging carried out by criminal groups, according to the environmental protection agency Profepa.

In a document cited by the newspaper El Universal, Profepa said there are 122 areas of forested land where severe deforestation has occurred due to “the high incidence of illegal logging related to organized crime groups.”

Those areas cover 313,500 square kilometers. Mexico’s total land area is approximately 1.97 million square kilometers.

According to the El Universal report published Monday, Mexico lost 662,000 hectares of primary forest between 2002 and 2020. About one-third of the lost forest – 228,000 hectares – was located in the 122 areas where severe deforestation has occurred, the newspaper said.

Illegal logging is mainly to blame, according to the organization Reforestamos México, which advocates for sustainable and legal logging. “Illegal logging is a widespread problem in Mexico,” said Emilio Cruz, one of the organization’s directors.

The remains of Illegal logging near Atlixco, Puebla.

The reason why it is so widespread, he said, is because felling trees illegally is cheaper since loggers avoiding paying taxes and wood export permits. Cruz also acknowledged that logging is “another business” for crime groups, which have diversified beyond activities like drug trafficking and extortion.

“In Mexico, 24 million cubic meters of wood are used per year. If we take into account that 8 million [cubic meters] are produced legally and 8 million are imported, this speaks of there being another 8 million [cubic meters] of which we don’t know the origin,” he said.

According to the National Forest Commission (Conafor), the bulk of that amount comes from illegal logging. It said in a 2019 report that the origin of 7 million cubic meters of wood that leave sawmills on an annual basis is illegal logging. The market value of that wood is above 7 billion pesos (US $343.5 million), Conafor said, underscoring just how lucrative illegal logging can be.

“Measuring illegal logging is complex, said Xiomara Domínguez, public policy coordinator at Reforestamos México.

“Profepa estimates that it’s 70% [of all logging] but they don’t have clear methodology,” she told El Universal.

Domínguez suggested that some legal sawmills are processing more wood than they are authorized to process. She also said that illegal sawmills operate in Mexico.

The federal government itself has acknowledged that illegal logging is encouraged by “the weakness of the rule of law,” a situation which El Universal said is reflected by corruption in the forestry sector, insufficient inspections and vigilance, the presence of organized crime and impunity.

“The weakness of the rule of law facilitates clandestine extraction … of raw forest materials, mainly wood for commercial use,” the federal Environment Ministry said in its 2020-24 national forestry plan. The objective of that plan, El Universal reported, is not to reduce the number of forested areas where illegal logging is causing deforestation, but only to ensure that the number of areas doesn’t grow.

The newspaper reported earlier this year that the number of government inspection visits to forests, sawmills and stores where wooden furniture is sold declined 75% between 2014 and 2020 from 4,600 in the former year to 1,162 in the latter.

The 122 forested areas where severe deforestation has occurred due to illegal logging carried out by organized crime are located across Mexico from jungle on the border between Chiapas and Guatemala to woods in the northern border state of Sonora.

Rene Gómez, a veteran lumberjack in Chiapas, told El Universal that illegal logging creates “unfair competition” because cutting down trees illicitly is 60% cheaper than doing it legally.

In Michoacán, legal and illegal loggers and sawmill operators said there is scant government oversight of the industry.

“We sometimes see the National Forestry Commission, but we never see [personnel from] the environmental protection agency or the Environment Ministry,” said one member of a logging family.

“Twenty years ago, they even brought helicopters [to combat illegal logging] but [the illegal loggers] put up a fierce fight. So they don’t come anymore.”

With reports from El Universal

4 arrested in Friday attack by gunmen near Mexico City airport

MND Staff

October 18, 2021

Two men and two women were arrested Sunday for an attack near Mexico City Airport on Friday, which Mexico City Police Chief Omar García Harfuch said was aimed at businessman Eduardo Beavan.

One of the arrested people was the alleged leader of the La Unión Tepito crime gang. One of the attackers – a 17-year-old – was killed by one of Beavan’s security guards who fired back.

The 17-year-old and another attacker intercepted Beavan’s vehicle on motorcycles near the airport. Beavan was shot in the leg and another man who was traveling with him was shot in the arm. Both were taken to hospital and their conditions were reported as stable.

The attackers were trying to murder Beaven, García confirmed. “It was a direct attack, they were going to kill this person. First there was the question of whether it was an attempted assault or a kidnapping, but no it was a direct attack, an attempted murder, and we are going to wait for the detainees … to say specifically what the motive is,” he said.

García added that the crime gang was already being investigated “which allowed us to detain them so quickly.” The suspects, he said, could be linked to homicides in Ecatepec, México state.

The arrests were made in Benito Juárez, Cuauhtémoc and Iztacalco. Photographs of Beavan were found during the arrests, the newspaper Milenio reported.

La Unión Tepito is engaged in a range of criminal activities, including extortion of local businesses, selling drugs and kidnapping and ransom collections.

Beavan is the owner of the Rosa Negra restaurant chain, which has restaurants in Mexico City, Tulum and Cancún. At the time of the attack, he was on his way to Mexico City Airport’s Terminal 2 to board a flight to Cancún.

With reports from Milenio and El Universal

How a public-private partnership helped Mexico fight Covid

Michael Stott

October 18, 2021

The Mexico City field hospital was erected through a partnership.

It was one of the more unconventional ways to deliver healthcare. In just 23 days, business leaders, medical experts and public officials came together to transform a giant convention center on the outskirts of Mexico City into a world-class 424-bed coronavirus field hospital.

Together, they gave the Mexican capital a crucial additional weapon in fighting the pandemic at its peak.

In 14 months of operation from April 2020, the Temporary Covid-19 Unit in the Citibanamex conference center treated more than 9,000 patients who were seriously ill with coronavirus, including nearly 2,600 in critical condition. All but 342 survived — a success rate which was the envy of many established Mexican hospitals.

Patients benefited from access to the latest drugs and treatments to fight coronavirus, such as high-flow oxygen therapy, and sophisticated diagnostics — the hospital had its own testing laboratory. Nobody paid for their stay: the US $76 million cost of setting up, equipping and running the hospital was met by a private sector consortium. Two-thirds came from foundations created by Latin America’s wealthiest man, Carlos Slim. Mexico City authorities provided the medical personnel.

What was most remarkable was the close teamwork between the public and private sectors in a region where healthcare is often sharply divided between underfunded state-provided services of uneven quality and expensive high-quality treatment offered to those with money.

“Something the private sector has is efficiency and autonomy in decision-making,” says Rafael Valdez, who led the Mexico City hospital’s medical team. “The public health sector can learn from the private sector’s experience and capacity to innovate. For the private sector, this was an opportunity to draw closer to the city government with something of common benefit.”

Coronavirus has hit Latin America particularly hard. With only 8% of the world’s population, the region has suffered almost a third of all deaths. The reasons are complex, including high levels of urban poverty and labour informality. But part of the explanation is to be found in the region’s weak healthcare systems.

“Most healthcare systems in the region are significantly underfunded,” says Panos Kanavos, associate professor of health policy at the London School of Economics and co-author of a study on Latin American healthcare. “Most claim to have universal health insurance . . . but services are fragmented or people don’t have access to them. The only countries which are relatively well-funded are Costa Rica and Uruguay.”

Spending on health was just $1,025 per person in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2017 — a quarter of the average in OECD countries when adjusted for purchasing power, according to a 2020 OECD report. Exacerbating the divide between rich and poor, only 59% of Latin American health spending came from governments and compulsory health insurance; the remainder was covered by private insurance or out-of-pocket payments.

Jeremy Veillard, senior health specialist for Latin America at the World Bank, says that, as well as patchy coverage and limited access to healthcare, quality is a significant issue. “The gaps in quality are so large that we’re going to need a mobilization of all the actors — public and private sector — to bridge those gaps.”

The way healthcare providers are paid in Latin America exacerbates the problem, because payment models are generally based on fees for services provided. “There are very few incentives to adjust payment for the achievement of better clinical outcomes,” Veillard adds.

Nonetheless, he believes that private sector healthcare companies have an important part to play. “There is space for the private and public sectors to find complementary roles in a way which is inclusive and does not turn the private sector into providing services only to the wealthy,” he says.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) estimates that more than $150 billion needs to be invested in hospitals, health centers and medical equipment in Latin America to bring them up to international standards. “We strongly believe the private sector is key for financing these challenges,” says Cristina Simón, head of social infrastructure at the IDB’s private sector arm.

The IDB has been promoting public-private partnerships to help build hospitals and clinics: the private sector builds the facilities and runs them on a long-term contract, which is supervised and funded by the public sector.

“According to a study done in Chile, the facilities cost 22% less . . . and are completed 35% faster,” Simón says.

Not everyone is convinced, though. Maria José Romero, a policy and advocacy manager at the European Network on Debt and Development, has co-authored a paper criticizing PPPs in Latin America.

“Universal access to healthcare can’t be guaranteed by market forces and dynamics,” she says. “Even in cases where the private sector provides high quality services, someone will have to pay for this and there is a high risk of excluding those who can’t pay.”

IDB Invest’s Simón says the key to ensuring successful PPPs lies in the public sector preparing the contracts properly and points out that they are now being used, or about to be used, in Chile, Brazil, Peru, Mexico and Colombia.

Another way in which the private sector has helped during the pandemic is in innovating and spreading telemedicine, using online consultations and diagnostics to benefit those on low incomes or in far-flung communities. “This has come to stay . . . it is huge,” she says.

Valdez has now returned to the private sector after running the field hospital and works for Pfizer. One of the most important legacies of the Mexico City project, he says, was a detailed set of instructions explaining how to set up a field hospital at short notice.

“In future, if there is a major earthquake or pandemic, you can convert spaces like this easily,” he says. “It’s a complete operations manual, open to everyone”.

Of the pioneering facility that harnessed private and public resources to save lives at a critical moment, Valdez says simply: “This has been the most important experience of my professional life.”

CDMX Metro’s illegal vendors include women COVID left without options

Lydia Carey

October 18, 2021

Vendor in Centro Médico station, Mexico City — A woman awaits her next customer in the Mexico City Metro's Centro Médico station.

If you have been on the Mexico City Metro at any point in the past year and a half, you have seen them: hundreds of women selling trinkets on blankets along hallways and around corners of the subway stations.

They sell face masks and hair bands, handmade jewelry and used clothing. The signs that hang behind them say “Women in the fight!” and other protest phrases. Once in a while, a vendor yells a feminist chant aloud, and the others answer her call.

When asked, these vendors say they are involved in a peaceful economic protest — some say against sexism and others say against the unemployment they face as women in the city. None of them are willing to give their names when interviewed, and few are willing to be photographed.

“There are certain stations now that they have completely shut us out of,” a vendor says at the Centro Médico Metro station. She is young, likely under 30, fidgeting with a brightly colored face mask that keeps slipping down under her nose. She has been here since the beginning of the pandemic. Other women direct me to her as the person that can speak about the movement.

She tells me that women here are simply looking for a way to feed their families, that many, if not most of them, are single mothers. Before COVID-19, this particular vendor was selling jewelry and candy on the sidewalk outside her daughter’s school, but once the pandemic began, police forced her to leave.

Vendors in Centro Médico station, Mexico City — City law prohibits selling anything in Mexico City’s public transit stations, but these women say the pandemic justifies reevaluating that prohibition.

Other women also lost jobs due to COVID; many selling like her in other locations were forced to leave, she said.

According to city law, selling anything in the Metro, Metrobus or Cablebús stations is illegal, but these women insist that their situation, aggravated by the pandemic, justifies reevaluating that prohibition.

In May of 2021, Julio Santella, the head of Mexico’s National Institute for Statistics and Geography (INEGI) said that female unemployment had risen 84% from May 2020. In the same period, eight million Mexicans joined the ranks of the informal economy, an increase of 35% from the year before. In August, INEGI reported that informal jobs were now 78% of the overall Mexican workforce.

In Tacubaya, a young twentysomething woman with a sweep of bangs and a black face mask sells next to her friend. The friend lives in the capital, but she’s from México state and brings her young son with her into the city each day to sell at the Metro.

“If a woman comes and says she doesn’t have any money to start her own business, we put together a collection,” she says, “We help each other. Because we’re women. If we attacked each other, then what?”

I ask her if it’s working, selling in the Metro, if she’s making any money. “It’s enough to eat,” she replies.

According to another vendor, the women are organized into a loose system of collectives throughout all the Metro stations in the city. They meet and communicate with each other and have organized in-person protests outside the Metro, like one that occurred in early October in front of the Bellas Artes performing arts center.

The collectives are closed to new vendors right now because the women have decided that any more sellers and it will “start to look like a tianguis in here,” she says, referring to Mexico’s crowded outdoor markets.

The push and pull between vendors and local government has a long and sordid history in Mexico City. Several city administrations have carried out campaigns to rid specific areas (e.g., the zócalo) of vendors or prevent specific types of vendors (CD sellers on the Metro) from being a “public nuisance” to tourists and locals. But the pandemic has brought this conflict into sharper focus, with vendors insisting that they must go out and make a living in the public space in order to survive and police and local government telling them they must stay home.

In August of 2020, roving vendors known as ambulantes in the city’s historic downtown asked the Mexico City government to stop what they considered their violent expulsion from certain areas of the city by the local police. The story of Lady Tacos de Canasta, a well-known Mexico City street food vendor forcibly ejected by police at the height of the pandemic (whom the world met on the Netflix documentary series The Taco Chronicles) was a visible example, but it was just one of many other unseen clashes between local police and vendors.

While the vendors at Centro Médico say the police there don’t bother them too much, they have seen other situations where women physically resisted expulsion. Many have their small children at their side. Often there are babies sleeping among the pink pencil erasers and sparkling rainbow backpacks.

“My 15-year-old daughter, she’s kind of like the mother of the house now,” one Centro Médico vendor says, explaining that she leaves food prepared in the morning for her children to eat in the evening. Her daughter makes sure her younger sibling is fed.

Decomisan bicicleta a 'Lady Tacos de Canasta'; investigan a policías

Watch this video on YouTube

How long will their protest continue? None of them really know, but for now they will continue to arrive at 5:30 a.m. and sit with their goods, hoping for customers and a few pesos at the end of the day.

As many expressed when interviewed, they feel they have no other choice.

Lydia Carey is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.

New Park Royal hotels planned in 2 states

MND Staff

October 18, 2021

Mexican hotel chain Royal Holiday plans to invest US $400 million to build new hotels in Baja California Sur and Quintana Roo.

The complexes will be part of the Park Royal brand which has nine hotels in Mexico, including properties in Sinaloa, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Baja California Sur, Quintana Roo and Jalisco. The chain also has sites in the United States, Puerto Rico and Argentina.

The investment will see four new hotels in total in the Riviera Maya in Quintana Roo, in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, and in the Dominican Republic.

Royal Holiday president Pablo González Carbonell said the outlook is positive for the tourism industry. “The market is set for growth … Total recovery is just around the corner.”

The chain offers a vacation club option, where members can subscribe and vacation in more than 200 destinations around the world, a program reported to have 80,000 active members. Carbonell said that innovation was important to the chain. “We have to evolve strongly, what we are doing in the vacation club membership is … entitling you not only to our hotels, but to more than 200 destinations and all cruises. It’s a whole menu of places,” he said.

Carbonell added that before the COVID-19 pandemic the company had annual sales of 4 billion pesos (about $21 million by January 2020 exchange rates), which last year dropped 50%. He expects sales levels to reach pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2022.

With reports from Milenio

Mexico moves to seize US assets: Wall Street Journal

MND Staff

October 18, 2021

President López Obrador’s proposed electricity reform “makes no sense” and if passed will take Mexico, and North American integration, backward, according to an opinion piece published by The Wall Street Journal.

Written by columnist and WSJ editorial board member Mary Anastasia O’Grady and published under the headline “Mexico moves to seize American assets,” the piece notes that Mexican authorities recently shut down three U.S.-owned fuel storage terminals in Mexico.

Unnamed energy sector sources cited by the newspaper Reforma claimed that the federal government was seeking to link private companies to the distribution and sale of illegal fuel.

O’Grady wrote that Monterra Energy – whose terminal in Tuxpan, Veracruz, was closed on Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) orders last month – told her it has complied with all regulations but the CRE isn’t answering its calls. The terminal, which imports gasoline from U.S. Gulf Coast refineries and supplies privately owned gas stations in Mexico, remains closed.

“There’s trouble brewing between Mexico and the U.S., and I’m not talking about immigration,” O’Grady wrote.

“President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s desire to put the state in full control of the energy industry, as it was in the 1970s, is running head-first into treaty obligations on trade and investment. The arbitrary closing of private gasoline-storage facilities is a fraction of the problem,” she said before condemning the president’s electricity sector agenda.

O’Grady said that a constitutional bill López Obrador (AMLO) sent to Congress this month – which seeks to guarantee 54% electricity market participation for the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and get rid of two independent regulators, the CRE and the National Hydrocarbons Commission – is labeled “electricity reform.”

“Yet while ‘reform’ normally suggests improvement, this legislation, if passed, will take Mexico, and North American integration, backward,” she wrote.

The columnist noted that AMLO’s bill – which will require opposition support to become law – seeks to modify three articles of the constitution, including Article 27, which would be amended to establish “that the strategic area of electricity belongs exclusively” to the state and consists “of generating, conducting, transforming, distributing and supplying electrical energy.”

O’Grady acknowledged that private companies would still be able to operate in the Mexican electricity market, “but they would have to sell to … [the] CFE, which would set prices as a monopsony and would run a monopoly in selling to users.”

“The CFE would be in charge of dispatching supply and guaranteed a minimum 54% of the market. This is a big change. Since Mexico opened its energy markets to private investment in 2014, electricity generators selling power into the grid have enjoyed dispatch of supply according to price, with more cost-efficient plants, like those using renewables, natural gas and modern technology, going first,” she wrote.

“Large consumers, including manufacturers, have been allowed to contract directly with private suppliers, which rent transmission lines at prices set by an independent regulator.”

O’Grady charged that a “state takeover of the entire electricity market and the end of an independent regulator makes no sense in a developing country that needs competition to ensure plentiful and cheap electricity for manufacturing.”

“But AMLO’s new law isn’t about enhancing electric power. It’s about consolidating state power – via its companies, the CFE and Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex),” she added.

By giving the CFE “constitutionally mandated control” over the supply and pricing of electricity, “Mexico would dangerously centralize political and economic power in the state-owned company,” O’Grady asserted.

“There’s an estimated $45 billion in private capital – foreign and domestic – in Mexico that will be affected by this new law. Notably, it will cancel all permits and long-term power-purchase agreements with the CFE – which were necessary to secure financing,” she wrote.

The editorial board member also charged that AMLO’s initiative would destroy Mexico’s nascent wind and solar industry.

“But he’s focused on helping Pemex unload its high-sulfur fuel oil, which is difficult to convert into revenue in the market,” O’Grady wrote. “Greater use of CFE fuel-oil-powered plants implies rising pollution and emissions when cheaper and cleaner options are readily available.”

The columnist asserted that the constitutional bill also violates the new North American free trade agreement, the USMCA, “as it abrogates contracts, capriciously strips investors of value, eliminates market-based competition, discriminates against private capital, cancels access to activities not reserved as exclusive in the agreement, and eliminates independent regulators, including in hydrocarbons.”

“… In a July 22 press conference, Mr. López Obrador pooh-poohed concerns that the U.S. might object to his crackdown on competition, insisting that Washington hasn’t complained. If Mexico’s Congress reads that as implicit U.S. approval of the bill, it will be a tragedy not only for investors but for all Mexicans,” O’Grady concluded.

It’s not the first time that the columnist, who writes weekly on politics, economics and business in Latin America and Canada, has gone on the offensive against AMLO.

In a 2020 piece entitled “Mexico slides toward one-man rule,” she accused the president of “working to consolidate as much power as possible” in the executive branch of government. AMLO dismissed the claim, charging that The Wall Street Journal lacked professionalism and didn’t know the history of the country.

With reports from The Wall Street Journal

Querétaro biology teacher named one of world’s top 10

MND Staff

October 18, 2021

A high school teacher in Querétaro has been named by the Varkey Foundation as one of the 10 best teachers in the world.

Diana Lorena Rubio Navarro has made the final 10 for the Global Teacher Prize 2021 for her work at the Center for Industrial Technology and Services Baccalaureate (CBTIS) in Corregidora, Querétaro. She holds a doctorate in neurobiological science from the National Autonomous University and started teaching biology in 2011.

Finalists were selected from 8,000 applications and nominations from 121 countries for the seventh edition of the contest, which will award US $1 million to the winner.

One of Rubio’s priorities is to promote the interest of women and girls in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers, the Varkey Foundation said. Last year, she won a national teaching prize for her work educating in STEM. The 1 million pesos (about $49,000) prize was used to buy materials for the science club at her school.

The Varkey Foundation lauded “her incredible work ethic and appetite to be a positive force for change,” and added that Rubio found teaching and “contact with young people to be mágical.”

The teacher participates in conferences at national events and is a co-founder of media platform Scienko México and Mujeresteam.dgeti, an online community which promotes women in STEM.

The Varkey Foundation said it set up the prize to “recognize one exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession as well as to shine a spotlight on the important role teachers play in society,” and to “unearth thousands of stories of heroes that have transformed young people’s lives.”

The other nine teachers are from Canada, the Philippines, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ghana, France, Australia and Iran.

Last year, Indian village teacher Ranjitsinh Disale, who tranformed the lives of young girls, was named the winner.

With reports from Milenio

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