Several videos and photos of the Christmas party thrown by Los Chapitos featured signs and even gifts for children emblazoned with their father's initials.
Two days after the United States announced US $5 million rewards for information leading to their arrest, the sons of jailed drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera allegedly threw an ostentatious Christmas party in Culiacán, Sinaloa.
The posada started last Friday night on a property on the outskirts of the municipality of Culiacán and continued until Saturday afternoon, according to the news magazine Proceso.
Videos of the event posted to social media showed bands playing on a stage. Among their repertoire were ballads that mentioned El Chapo, the newspaper El Universal reported.
Videos and photographs also show hundreds of children’s gifts, all adorned with stickers featuring the letters JGL — Joaquín Guzmán Loera’s initials.
Raffle prizes — including several cars, widescreen televisions and refrigerators — were also embellished with the stickers.
Jailed ex-Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s four sons, wanted by US authorities, are collectively nicknamed ‘Los Chapitos.’
None of the guests appear in the videos and photographs shared on social media, presumably to protect their identity.
Sinaloa government sources cited by Proceso said the posada organized by Los Chapitos was intended to maintain the social base built by their father, the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. The newspaper Milenio in early December cited federal sources as saying Los Chapitos have started to lose the sympathy of Sinaloa residents due to acts of violence they have committed against cartel members and ordinary people.
The Guzmán brothers allegedly organized a large Christmas party in 2020 as well. That event, which also took place in Culiacán, was shut down by state and federal security forces.
This year’s event came after the U.S. Department of State announced rewards of up to US $5 million each for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, Joaquín Guzmán López and Ovidio Guzmán López.
“All four are high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel, and are each subject to a federal indictment for their involvement in the illicit drug trade,” the State Department said.
REALIZAN “CHAPO POSADA”
Los Chapitos”, hijos de Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán realizan posada 2021 en #Sinaloa. Grupos norteños, rifas de autos y regalos con las iniciales de su padre GJL fueron entregados a los asistentes. pic.twitter.com/9Ghank6EvG
There were celebrations in Guanajuato yesterday as same-sex marriage became legal.
Guanajuato lawmakers approved same-sex marriage on Monday, just days after neighboring Zacatecas made the practice legal.
The conservative state in the El Bajío industrial region is the 26th where two people of the same gender can legally marry.
The legal change was ordered by decree in a letter sent to the state’s civil registry.
“From this date … the right of all people, without discrimination due to their sexual preference, to contract marriage in our civil registry offices is recognized and made effective,” it read.
The letter added that couples can marry “without the need for any legal remedy.” Previously, same-sex couples were only able to marry after filing for a court injunction, which cost as much as 20,000 pesos (almost US $1,000).
Activist and founder of León Libre (Free León), Juan Pablo Delgado, celebrated the news on social media: “It’s a huge step being taken to build a society that offers equal conditions for all people. Long live diversity,” he said.
However, rights activists from the Bajío said the state Congress still needs to reform its Civil Code, where marital union is defined as that between a husband and wife, the newspaper Reforma reported.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that civil codes defining marriage as between a man and a woman or for the sole purpose of procreation were unconstitutional, but some states have still not changed their laws, meaning that in order to get married within their borders same-sex couples must apply for a marriage license with their local civil registry, be rejected and then file for an injunction and wait for their case to move through the system.
Mexico City was the first entity to recognize gay marriage, doing so in 2010. The states where same-sex marriage has not been fully legalized are Durango, México state, Guerrero, Tabasco, Tamaulipas and Veracruz.
More than 4,000 migrants have crossed the southern border every day this year on average, a 44.5% increase over 2020.
An average of 4,026 migrants — largely from Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador — entered each day in 2021, primarily into Chiapas. The border state saw 1.2 million crossings in the first 10 months of the year, which is more than the 893,000 total it recorded in 2020.
The NationalImmigration Institute (INM) has reacted to the surge in Chiapas by containing migrants in the city of Tapachula, and in many cases imprisoning them in detention centers. Such detentions increased nearly threefold in Chiapas in annual terms this year: in 2020 there were 25,000 detentions, compared to 67,376 in 2021.
However, that policy of containment has put unsustainable pressure on the refugee agency COMAR which has been unable to process the flood of asylum applications, leaving migrants stranded without the right to work or travel. Some have waited more than a year for their applications to be resolved.
Chiapas is the point of greatest friction: the border states of Tabasco, Campeche and Quintana Roo have only reported 30,151 land entries this year. However the 27,000 detentions recorded in Tabasco in 2021 is still four times higher than the state’s figure for 2020.
Faced with little prospect of migration slowing, COMAR and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have agreed to increase the federal agency’s workforce with an extra 230 staff, the newspaper Milenio reported.
Meanwhile, migrants from the caravan that left Tapachula on October 25 protested in Mexico City on Saturday for International Migrants Day, just days after completing their mammoth trek to the capital.
The convoy congregated outside the U.S. Embassy with signs saying “Migration is not a crime, the crime is the government that represses;” “migration is not for pleasure, it’s a necessity,” and “Mexico, do not stop us.”
One migrant expressed distrust in the government of President López Obrador: “He has repressed us with the National Guard, with the police, we believe in him very little. But first [we hope] God touches his heart and does the right thing. May he will have a little humanity.”
Honduran migrant Christian Gutierrez who traveled with his wife and two-year-old son said the journey was colored by fear and fatigue, and called on the president to allow the migrants to pass through the country, given that their destination is ultimately the United States.
The president urged U.S. President Joe Biden to change his country’s immigration policy at a meeting in November. He also pointed some responsibility to Biden after the highway disaster that killed 55 migrants in Chiapas on December 9.
It might have been fake, but that doesn't stop people from enjoying "snow" in Mexico City's zócalo. Photos by Joseph Sorrentino
There’s a magic in Christmas lights that can somehow make a city as large and chaotic as Mexico City feel like a small pueblo.
If you go downtown right now to the city’s Plaza de la Constitución (the zócalo), the buildings have been decked out with lights and huge decorations. Inside, there’s a celebration of the Christmas season called Verbena Navideña.
The ongoing Verbena Navideña event opened on December 12 — coinciding with the first night that the posadas people hold all over Mexico begin. Posadas commemorate the birth of Jesus and go on all over the country for nine days, commemorating the nine months the Virgin Mary was pregnant.
But while the posadas will continue only until December 24, the Verbena Navideña in Mexico City will go until December 31.
A verbena is a traditional Spanish celebration that may be anything from an agricultural show to a dance party to a fiesta held in honor of a pueblo’s patron saint. In Mexico City, the Verbena Navideña features eight different attractions including music, performances and rides.
Performers in a pastorela, a sometimes solemn, but sometimes comic play about the birth of Jesus Christ.
In the afternoons and early evening, the Escenario de Coros (Choir Stage) hosts groups singing villancicos, songs that were popular in Spain and Portugal in the 15th to 18th centuries. Now, a villancico may refer to any Christmas carol.
Later at night, there are performances of La Noche Más Venturosa (The Most Fortunate Night), which is a pastorela, a play about the birth of Jesus. Although often depicted in a more solemn manner, this performance was funny and full of antics.
Three Christmas trees made from more than 3,500 poinsettias dominate one part of the zócalo, and while the traditional ice skating rink wasn’t there this year, there were toboggan rides. At the end of the ride, you run into the Bosque Nevada, the Snowy Forest, where a machine periodically dusts people with a bit of man-made snow.
There are several workshops for children (and for adults who want to feel young again), where they can color Christmas scenes or make Christmas trees out of paper. Yenifer Karina Rojos Flores said that watching her son make a tree was one of her favorite parts of the event. “That and the toboggan,” she said.
For the more cerebral-minded, there’s chess, with a large board for children and a regular-sized one for adults. Marisol De Paz Martínez and her six-year-old daughter, Italivi Salazar De Paz, competed on the large board in the early afternoon. Several games were being played on the regular-sized boards, one featuring a young man dressed as a traditional Mexica (Aztec) dancer.
There are also rides, including a Ferris wheel, a Merry-go-round, a roller coaster and a couple of rides that drop children from various heights, something that they apparently love. If you plan on taking your kids (or yourself) on the rides, be aware that on the first day, people began lining up for two hours before the rides opened.
A young woman gets some Christmas thrills riding a toboggan.
Because of the ongoing pandemic, gel is offered at the entrances and masks are required. On the first day, at least, there was no limit on the number of people allowed in, so social distancing wasn’t possible.
Dozens of young people dressed in green vests patrol the grounds, answering questions and helping out where needed.
They’re members of Los Jovenes Unen al Barrio (Youth Unite The Neighborhood), a program that’s part of Instituto de la Juventude de la CDMX (Youth Institute of Mexico City).
There’s also a substantial police presence inside and outside the zócalo.
Verbena Navideña is sponsored by the government of Mexico City, and despite its 25 million peso (about USD $1.25 million) price tag, it’s a free event. Most days, it will be open from noon to 9 p.m., but on December 24 and 31, it will be open from noon to 5 p.m.
On December 25 and January 1, it will be open 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. It ends on December 31.
A gentleman gets a furry fist bump.
Performances vary daily but, unfortunately, there’s no information online about them. It’s best to just go and have a good time.
The ownership of expensive real estate has thrust yet another federal official into the spotlight.
Former public administration minister Irma Sandoval faced accusations of corruption last year after it came to light that she and her husband owned properties worth some 60 million pesos (US $2.9 million). Earlier this month President López Obrador called for the ex-chief of the government’s Financial Intelligence Unit, Santiago Nieto, to be investigated after the newspaper Reforma reported that he had bought or acquired four properties and an Audi car worth a combined 40 million pesos (US $1.9 million).
Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero has an even more valuable real estate portfolio, the news outlet Univision has revealed.
It reported that Gertz, a former lawmaker and federal security minister, owns two expensive properties in the United States. He purchased an apartment in a New York art deco building that overlooks Central Park for US $2.4 million and an apartment in Santa Monica, California, for $1.1 million in 2007.
He bought the New York property just after his three-year term as a federal deputy ended, while he was president of the Mexican Federation of Private Higher Education Institutes when he purchased the Santa Monica apartment.
Gertz told Univision that he has declared the New York property to tax authorities and the Ministry of Public Administration (SFP), the government’s internal corruption watchdog. The California property “is perfectly registered,” he said without specifying if he has declared it to tax authorities and whether it is included in his declaration of assets to the SFP.
The attorney general told Univision that the purchases were made with resources from a long-established family fortune. “I have nothing to hide,” Gertz said.
However, the details of his fortune are a mystery, Univision said, noting that the attorney general has not agreed to the disclosure of his declaration of assets.
He told Univision that he prefers to keep the details under wraps to avoid possible extortion attempts. Asked why other officials allow the publication of their financial situations when they too could be extorted, Gertz responded that it was “possibly because they don’t have a significant fortune.”
Some clues to the attorney general’s wealth are contained in the Paradise Papers – 13.4 million documents obtained by German newspaper Südeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in 2017. He was identified as the vice president of a personal investment company incorporated in the Cayman Islands, generally considered a tax haven.
However, Gertz has denied any knowledge of the company, whose principal beneficiary was his brother Federico, who died in 2015.
The Univision report comes less than two weeks after the newspaper El Universal reported that the 81-year-old bought 122 cars between 2014 and 2015, including several Mercedes-Benzes and a Rolls Royce. Reports have also said that Gertz owns houses in Paris and Las Lomas, an upscale district of Mexico City.
The attorney general told Univision that the reports are part of a campaign of “media harassment” against him. López Obrador has indicated that he considers Gertz to be an honest man.
International flights easily outnumbered domestic ones.
Cancún airport had its second busiest day on record on Saturday in terms of the number of incoming and outgoing flights.
A total of 648 flights touched down at or departed from the resort city’s airport, a figure just 11 fewer than the all-time high of 659 flights on March 31, 2018.
Just under 51% of the operations were arrivals. International operations easily outnumbered domestic ones.
Travelers arriving on international flights are not required to present a negative COVID test result or go into mandatory quarantine.
“Historic Saturday for the #MexicanCaribbean!” tweeted Quintana Roo Governor Carlos Joaquín.
“… We’re on the verge of beating the record of March 2018. … Welcome tourists, have fun and look after your health!”
It was the first time since the start of the pandemic that incoming and outgoing flights exceeded 600 in a single day at Cancún airport, the world’s second busiest airport for international arrivals last year after that in Dubai. The previous pandemic record was 567 flights on Saturday, December 11.
That mark was also surpassed on Sunday with 568 operations. Among the 60 international destinations with direct connections to Cancún are Amsterdam, Atlanta, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Calgary, Caracas, Dallas, Edmonton, Frankfurt, Guatemala City, Houston, Havana, Istanbul, Lima, Lisbon, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Miami, Montreal, Moscow, New York, Panama City, Paris, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington D.C. and Zurich.
The Sacred Child of Atocha is expected to be good for religious tourism.
After a year in storage in Mexico City, a huge statue of a young Christ child arrived at a town in Zacatecas on Sunday to take its place behind a revered church.
The installation of the seven-meter, three-tonne Sacred Child of Atocha was delayed due to the death of its sponsor of COVID-19 in 2020. The gas company manager had bought the effigy as an act of religious devotion, but failed to fully pay off its 750,000 peso (almost US $39,000) cost before he died.
The government of Fresnillo stepped in to cover more than half of the outstanding cost and paid for the effigy to be transported, spending more than 500,000 pesos (about $24,000) in the process.
The work was divided into 12 pieces to be moved on two trailers to its place on the Cerro de la Cruz (Cross Hill) in the community of Plateros, near Fresnillo.
A ceremony to bless the effigy is planned for Christmas Day at the church, which is considered the third most important Catholic pilgrimage site in the country after the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City and the Basilica of San Juan de los Lagos in Jalisco.
The statue in place on a hill in Plateros, Zacatecas.
Up to 2.5 million pilgrims used to visit annually to venerate an image of Christ as a child and more than 1,000 faithful are expected for the Christmas ceremony.
Fresnillo Mayor Saúl Monreal said it was worth meeting the cost due to the value of religious tourism to the area. He may be hoping that the young Christ will help tourism be reborn entirely. Violence has had a brutal impact on the industry over the past decade and there’s no sign of it abating: Fresnillo is seen by its residents as the least safe city in the country.
Migrants await attention by immigration staff in the Ciudad Concordia Sports Center in Campeche city. Photos by Underhemp Balloo
In the Ciudad Concordia Sports Center on the outskirts of Campeche, a domed white tent bustles with people: men, women and children weaving between seated groups. Families are sleeping or sitting on mats laid out close together. Laundry is being done in sinks a few meters from the bustle of the sleeping area. Clothes are slung over fences, poles and almost any other vaguely horizontal surface to bake dry in the sun.
A migrant camp in Campeche is a largely unfamiliar sight for most of the residents of the city, but for the people from various countries who are temporarily housed here, this is not the first they have stayed in. They all hope it will be the last.
The National Immigration Institute transferred these migrants from the border city of Tapachula, Chiapas, earlier this month in an attempt to mitigate pressure on immigration officials there. Campeche is just but one example of cities throughout Mexico where INM officials have been moving migrants awaiting legal immigration status in Tapachula. Officials in that border city have been overwhelmed with trying to process thousands of migrants from Central and South America, the Caribbean and elsewhere who keep arriving there from Guatemala.
Despite the cramped quarters here in the Campeche sports center, there were no complaints about conditions or treatment. Both immigration officials and migrants made clear that the migrants are free to leave once their paperwork is processed.
There were, however, some murmuring protests about the speed of the process, which, when including wait times in Tapachula, has taken weeks for the majority here and is still not complete. Without increased resources to aid INM officials here, however, little is likely to change.
Washing clothes by hand at some outdoor sinks near the sports center’s makeshift sleeping area.
The INM office in Campeche is small and ill-equipped to deal with the sudden influx of people requesting regularization paperwork. Three service booths are hardly sufficient for hundreds of individuals keen to move on from here, even with officials manning the tiny office throughout the night.
Due to its isolated position on the Yucatán Peninsula, the state of Campeche has seen little of the movement of people from southern countries seeking a better life. Now, however, according to Ángel Hernández, the INM subdelegate in Campeche, caravans of migrants in Chiapas are being redistributed across the country in an attempt to ease the pressure on immigration services and the infrastructure in Chiapas, the main point of entry to Mexico for the majority of migrants from Central and South America.
Once relocated to other states, migrants are offered a humanitarian visitor visa, valid for a year. This allows them to move freely through the country and work. After their year-long emergency visa has expired, the pathway is open to applications for permanent residency and citizenship in Mexico. It is a policy that, although noticeably more hospitable towards refugees and asylum seekers than has historically been the case in Mexico, seems designed to fail.
Simply redistributing groups of migrants to cities across the country defers rather than deals with the issues facing migrant families: lack of infrastructure, racism, xenophobia and outright persecution, not to mention a plethora of further issues for those who decide to venture on to the northern border with the United States.
Indeed, most of the migrants in the camp do not intend to stay in Mexico; almost nobody in the camp was intending to stay in Campeche, and a very few were planning to settle wherever they could find work. The majority planned to continue north through the country until they reached the United States, regardless of what Mexico was offering in terms of immigration status.
The situation is born of pressure from the United States to legalize migrants in Mexico, with the hope that legal status here will discourage the flow of people continuing northward who believe that Biden’s electoral campaign policies will manifest themselves as a reality through a restored asylum system.
Over 121,000 migrants have applied for asylum in Mexico this year through November 2021, according to the UN, posing a huge challenge to the nation’s immigration agency. UNHCR
Hernández estimates that there are around 700 migrants currently in Campeche. Of these, around half are originally from Haiti, and the remainder hail from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Honduras. The majority of the Haitian migrants currently in the camp have been in “intermediate countries” of Central and South America, living and working on temporary permits in places like Brazil and Chile since 2015 and 2016.
Once the COVID-19 pandemic began, however, work dried up, and people found themselves in desperate situations. Junior, a young man from Haiti, left his home country for Suriname after finishing his degree in agronomy and worked for a year in a beach shop in Suriname.
He speaks about his family in the U.S., whom he is hoping to join once his papers in Mexico are processed. They are sending him remittances to help with the cost of his journey.
“I’m traveling with one other person, and we got stuck in Tapachula for a month, where nothing was happening. All we were told was that we’d be moved eventually because there were too many people in Tapachula,” he said.
“We’ve only been here for two days, and we’re hoping to be able to move on soon, though we’re not exactly sure what the process is,” he added.
Though everyone Junior had spoken to had been in the camp for a few days awaiting their paperwork, he said that there was no sense that people’s needs were being ignored or that they were being made to wait around.
“They’re very patient at [INM],” he said, “and we get meals here, so it isn’t too bad.”
Nevertheless, he is eager to move on. “Once I get my card, I can leave here,” he says with a grin.
Junior’s tale is typical of everyone in the camp willing to discuss their journey: weeks in limbo at the southern border followed by a hasty relocation to Campeche.
Though the situation is far from ideal for any of the involved parties, it is magnitudes more accommodating than the draconian practices of other nations, who continue to treat fleeing migrants with hostility and, in many cases, outright aggression.
Whatever the eventual outcome of each individual’s journey, there is clearly a severe need for increased aid for vulnerable groups of migrants in Mexico, who are being left to figure out their futures in cities they never intended to visit as a way to give governments — here and in the United States — stall time on their immigration policies.
Shannon Collins is an environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think tank. She writes from Campeche.
The army dismantled 113 synthetic drug laboratories in the first 34 months after President López Obrador took office, a 70% decrease compared to the same period of Enrique Peña Nieto’s presidency.
According to a National Defense Ministry (Sedena) report obtained by the newspaper Milenio via a freedom of information request, the narco-labs were discovered between December 2018 and September 2021 in more than 10 states.
The total number of dismantled labs was 258 fewer than the number destroyed during the first 34 months of Peña Nieto’s 2012-18 government.
Sixty of the meth and fentanyl labs, or 53% of the total, were located in three states where the Sinaloa Cartel dominates. The army detected 46 in Sinaloa including 26 in state capital Culiacán and 15 in neighboring Cosalá, 10 in Durango and four in Sonora.
News of the discoveries comes just days after the United States government announced rewards of up to US $5 million each for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of four sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera.
The State Department said last week that Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar were operating sophisticated fentanyl laboratories in Culiacán, and that Joaquín Guzmán López and Ovidio Guzmán López were overseeing about 11 methamphetamine labs in Sinaloa.
The Sedena report said that 27 of the dismantled labs were located in Jalisco and Michoacán, where the Jalisco New Generation Cartel is the dominant criminal group.
Among the other states where narco-labs were found were Guerrero, Guanajuato, Querétaro, Colima, Hidalgo, México state, Morelos and Puebla.
Meanwhile, the United States Border and Customs Protection (CBP) reported Friday that drug seizures in that country increased 90% in November.
“CBP officers, Border Patrol agents, and Air and Marine Operations agents continue to interdict the flow of illicit narcotics. Nationwide, drug seizures were up 90% in November over the prior month, as CBP eased travel restrictions for vaccinated travelers,” it said.
The CBP said that seizures of methamphetamine rose 164%, while cocaine confiscations increased 41%. Fentanyl seizures were up 7% while those of heroin fell 12%.
INE president Lorenzo Córdova says the vote is not viable in light of a 5-billion-peso reduction in the agency's funding.
The National Electoral Institute (INE) has indefinitely postponed a referendum on President López Obrador’s leadership on the grounds that it doesn’t have sufficient funds to organize the vote.
A so-called “revocation of mandate” referendum in which citizens would have the opportunity to vote in favor or against the president completing his six-year term was slated to be held on April 10.
But in a 6-5 vote on Friday, INE councilors approved the postponement of the exercise, raising the ire of López Obrador and the ruling Morena party. The INE will, however, continue counting and reviewing signatures of support for the referendum. At least 3% of eligible voters, or more than 2 million Mexicans, must back the vote in order for it to go ahead.
INE president Lorenzo Córdova said that organizing a referendum with 161,000 voting booths was not viable following an almost 5-billion-peso (US $241.2 million) cut to the institute’s funding.
“With the money the INE has today, [a large vote] simply can’t be organized. … We have to be categorical and clear – an exercise such as the revocation of mandate cannot be carried out under the terms established by the federal legislature,” he said.
Córdova, who has previously clashed with the president on electoral issues, said that López Obrador could solve the problem by directing the Finance Ministry to allocate additional funds to the INE. He stressed that the electoral authority was not canceling the planned vote but merely putting it off to a later date.
The vote could still be held in April if Morena successfully challenges the INE decision in court.
“It is not the INE that is today placing the celebration of an eventual revocation of mandate [vote] at risk but rather those who took the political decision to deny the resources needed so that this process can be carried out with all the guarantees of legality and certainty,” Córdova said.
In light of the INE’s decision, Morena national president Mario Delgado called on lower house lawmakers with his party and its allies to initiate misconduct cases against the electoral councilors for violating their constitutional duty.
“The INE is going against the constitution, they [the councilors] don’t have the authority to do what they did,” he told a press conference.
“… The INE councilors have decided to join the conservative bloc,” Delgado said before asserting that it’s clear that they are not the electoral councilors Mexico needs.
Sergio Gutiérrez Luna, a Morena lawmaker and current president of the Chamber of Deputies, subsequently announced that an appeal against the INE’s decision would be filed with the Supreme Court.
Mario Llergo, another Morena deputy and that party’s representative to the INE, accused the institute of seeking to “twist” the law and trying to stop the referendum any way it could.
“In Morena, we’re not going to allow Mexicans’ rights to be trampled on. Call it postponement, suspension or whatever term that want … [but] we think it’s incorrect,” he said.
“If the budget shortage they allege is real, [the INE] should have the will to reduce [the use of] resources where we all know they are not needed,” Llergo said.
The president and Morena lawmakers have been highly critical of INE spending, claiming it has not adopted the austerity measures demanded of federal agencies.
López Obrador called the INE’s decision “very regrettable” and charged that it has a constitutional responsibility to organize the referendum.
“… We used to live in a political system characterized by simulation; democracy was spoken about … but in fact anti-democratic attitudes dominated and this is what is on display [here]. … If they don’t want to comply [with the constitutional obligation to organize the vote] and they use excuses, it’s part of the same old simulation,” he told reporters at his news conference on Monday.
According to Francisco González, a professor of Latin American politics at Johns Hopkins University, López Obrador perceives his power “as being a function of people reiterating their support actively.”
“He wants it officially confirmed to give him that comfort of being the popular leader who is doing the right thing for Mexico,” he told The Los Angeles Times.
Stephanie Brewer, the director for Mexico and migrant rights at the United States-based Washington Office on Latin America, told the Times that victory in the planned referendum on his rule would provide the president with added impetus to execute his agenda.
“What he wants is to come out of the vote, supposing there is one, politically strengthened with this renewed and amplified popular mandate,” she said.
Some critics have warned that López Obrador could use a strong result in the referendum – it requires 40% participation to be binding – as a stepping stone towards extending his presidency beyond the established six-year term.
Opposition politicians have accused the president of using the vote as a promotional tool and many supported the INE’s decision to postpone it.
The government “must admit that nobody is obliged [to do] the impossible,” said National Action Party president Marko Cortés.
“Especially … [when] it was the Morena deputies who took the money for the revocation of mandate from the INE.”
Democratic Revolution Party politician Ángel Ávila accused Morena of wanting to hold a “sham” referendum whose result is preordained, as he claimed occurred with the airport consultation.
“We all remember that … the same people were able to vote once or 20 times … and then there was a magical result [just] as the president wanted,” he said.
Ávila praised the INE for “not lending itself to these kinds of games – [the staging of] sham, simulated consultations so that the tenant of the National Palace can measure his ego and popularity.”
