Caravan leader Luis Villagrán rallies the crowd. Ben Wein
A new 2,000-strong migrant caravan left Tapachula, Chiapas, on Thursday, and plans to catch up to another convoy in Veracruz, which left the border city 26 days ago.
The migrants congregated in Bicentenario Park at 6 a.m. to begin their northward journey and passed through the first immigration checkpoint at Viva México at about 9 a.m. to no resistance, the same place where National Guard officers in riot gear attempted to block the earlier caravan on October 23. The group hopes to reach Huehuetán on Thursday, 26 kilometers north.
The two convoys are demographically similar, with a wide range of ages, many children, pregnant women and some disabled people. However, there is one marked difference: Haitians, who did not march in large numbers on October 23, are the best represented nationality in the new caravan.
The Haitian contingent sang in French Creole and played Haitian music from speakers as they advanced. One Haitian woman, who was traveling with a child, manically screamed “Hallelujah” in Pentecostal prayer.
Among the convoy were migrants who were detained by security officials in the previous caravan. They alleged physical abuse by private security officials when they were detained near the Veracruz border, and said they were sent to the prison-like detention center in Tapachula, but later released.
The new caravan leaves Tapachula. Ben Wein
Speaking on Tuesday, caravan leader Luis García Villagrán, a Mexican with the Center for Human Dignity, said President López Obrador’s claim, that migrants were treated well, was contradicted by the actions of federal agents.
“The president has said that in Mexico migrants are helped, they are protected, they are cared for and their human rights are not violated. But the National Guard and the National Immigration Institute (INM) do the opposite: they detain them, murder, and persecute girls, boys, women and men,” he said.
Pedro, a Venezuelan wearing a mask of President López Obrador, said low wages made staying in Venezuela impossible. “It hurts to abandon your country … but working for $4 I can’t put up with it … we’re going to work. We’re going to do what we couldn’t do in our countries,” he said.
A number of Haitians cited a lack of work opportunities as their reason for leaving Tapachula.
Meanwhile, the other caravan, now in Veracruz, stayed in Jesús Carranza on Wednesday, almost 500 kilometers from Tapachula. Only about 300 migrants remain in that group, according to the Veracruz state government, after the majority gradually turned themselves in to INM officials on the promise of humanitarian visas.
A local newspaper reports on the caravan. Ben Wein
Tapachula is the modern Casablanca: a city flooded with migrants, desperately awaiting their papers, which may never arrive. There were a record 108,000 asylum applications made to the refugee agency COMAR from January-October, 80% higher than in the entire previous administration. Most of those applications were made in the city, near the Guatemalan border.
The legal status of migrants in the city is increasingly clouded: they have been banned from leaving while they await the outcome of their applications to COMAR and the INM. However, both agencies have buckled under the pressure of migrant influxes, leaving undocumented migrants waiting for responses to applications without any reliable time frame.
The INM has not responded to applications for residence for more than two years in some cases, the newspaper El Orbe reported.
The head of COMAR, Andrés Ramírez, said the agency was underfunded and had been overwhelmed, while critics have labelled Tapachula a “prison city.”
Flooding that contributed to the deaths of 14 COVID-19 patients at a hospital in Tula, Hidalgo, in early September wasn’t caused by heavy rain in the local area but rather runoff from farther afield, according to the National Water Commission (Conagua).
Water that entered an IMSS hospital in Tula on September 7 flooded wards and damaged a generator which would have provided an alternative power supply for the oxygen machines on which patients were dependent. Heavy rain had cut electrical supply to much of the municipality.
In addition to the 14 COVID-19 patients who died, two other patients passed away just before water from the Tula River flooded the facility, according to IMSS director Zoé Robledo.
In an internal report disseminated by President López Obrador’s office this week, Conagua said the flooding was caused by runoff that reached Tula from outside that municipality, in particular the Valley of México, located about 60 kilometers to the south.
Conagua said that runoff from the Sierra de Guadalupe, the collapse of the drainage system in Ecatepec, the overflow of a wastewater canal in Chimalhuacán and an increase in the water levels of dams that regulate water flows in the Tula River all contributed to the severe flooding in Tula.
“It wasn’t local rain but rather runoff from rivers, dams and drainage works in the Valley of México and the state of Hidalgo that caused the flooding,” the water commission said.
Up to 500 cubic meters of water per second flowed into the Tula River during the night of September 6, double the waterway’s capacity to integrate.
Carlos Paillés, a civil engineer and head of the Hidalgo Valleys Environmental Infrastructure Trust, said in late September that a flaw in the design of the Eastern Emission Tunnel (TEO) project, which was completed in 2019, was the main reason why Tula suffered severe flooding.
Paillés described the 30-billion-peso, 62-kilometer-long mega tunnel – built to reduce the risk of flooding in Mexico City – as an “extraordinary hydraulic engineering project” but one that is incomplete because it doesn’t include a canal that would allow runoff to flow into the Tula River at more than one point.
The Central Emission Tunnel, which drains wastewater from Mexico City, also flows into the Tula River as do the Salto, Tlautla and Rosas rivers. In 2017, the federal Environment Ministry called for work to be undertaken to increase the Tula River’s water-carrying capacity but it was never done. The Conagua report said that opposition from environmental groups stopped the project from going ahead.
The federal Attorney General’s Office is investigating to determine whether anyone can be held criminally accountable for the deaths of the COVID patients. The Conagua report said that the deaths occurred due to “a chain of unexpected, extraordinary, inevitable and uncontrollable events.”
President López Obrador and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a scheduled meeting Thursday morning at the White House. lopezobrador.org.mx
Rarely in history has the relationship between Mexico and the United States been so ambiguous as today when, by dint of an invitation from President Joe Biden, the North American Leaders’ Summit takes place in Washington, D.C.
It will be the first face-to-face trilateral meeting of North American heads of state since 2016 after they were discontinued by Donald Trump.
U.S. President Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have met twice in person already this year. First in October, in Rome, as part of the G20 — the international forum that brings together the world’s 20 major economies and accounts for more than 80% of world GDP, 75% of global trade, 60% of the world’s population, as well as 75% of global carbon emissions. They also met just two weeks ago in Glasgow at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, the most important meeting yet on that subject.
A priority for both of those previous summits was reaffirming international efforts to limit the increase in global mean temperature to 1.5 C and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that continue to warm the planet. President López Obrador chose not to attend either of the two summits, so today will be the first time that he is meeting in person with his North American counterparts.
But what will Presidents Biden and López Obrador and Prime Minister Trudeau talk about when they meet today? What kind of agreements might they reach for?
US and Canada’s leaders both attended the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. President López Obrador chose not to. Office of Prime Minister Barbados
Things seem to suggest that the main topics on the agenda will be the economy and competitiveness, security (drug trafficking and smuggling of firearms to Mexico through the U.S. border), COVID-19, migration and climate change.
The last two issues will likely be the most contentious, and the likely outcomes of the meeting will slant toward the individual political yearnings of all three leaders.
President Biden is under relentless internal pressure, by both Democrats and Republicans, to stop the flood of migration at the southern border, and this is one of the major political crises of his first year in the White House.
Also, the U.S. and Canada have both expressed deep public concerns over the negative impacts that President López Obrador’s electricity reform will have on the billions of dollars invested by American and Canadian companies in Mexico.
Adding fuel to the fire, President Biden has mandated that half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 in the U.S. be zero-emissions, and he is also working toward preferential tax incentives to promote the purchase of all-American-built, union-made electric vehicles. Neither Canada nor Mexico looks favorably on these new vehicle policies.
Biden also canceled the Keystone XL pipeline expansion which, given the huge stakes that Canada has in that project, has embittered his relationship with Trudeau.
The majority of environmental funding for 2022 went to hydraulic infrastructure, not protecting natural areas like this reserve in Tabasco. Alfonsobouchot/Creative Commons
And their positions on what is happening in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela will be the elephant in the room when the three leaders meet. Will they even bring that up?
It is hard to imagine in the modern history of the Mexico-U.S. relationship two presidents as dissimilar as López Obrador and Biden. Not only do they differ in fundamental visions for their countries (and the world), but their political styles will probably mix like oil and water during their discussions.
Furthermore, President Biden wants to position himself as a champion in confronting the global warming challenge while President López Obrador has chosen to completely ignore this crucial planetary threat.
Differences become especially acute when considering how Biden and López Obrador regard environmental issues, particularly climate change. These differences are strongly reflected in their public policies and investment priorities.
Tackling global warming was one of President Biden’s main campaign promises. On Monday, he launched his new infrastructure program, with strong bipartisan support, for more than US $1 trillion, of which US $73 billion is destined for the electric grid, $47 billion for climate resilience/adaptation, $21 billion for environmental projects and $7.5 billion for electric vehicles.
He has also pledged that the U.S. will reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and reduce greenhouse gases by 50% to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030. As an environmental statement, Biden canceled the Keystone pipeline expansion on his first day as president.
A worker tends to saplings at a Tabasco nursery for the Sembrando Vida tree-planting program. File photo
In contrast, fighting climate change is not a priority for President López Obrador.
The construction of the Dos Bocas oil refinery in Tabasco, the “modernization” of another six refineries in Mexico, and Pemex’s acquisition from Shell Oil of the Deer Park refinery in Texas leave no doubt about the government’s continued preference for reliance on fossil fuels. And Mexico’s governmental investments in environmental conservation fall far short of what is needed and what its citizens demand.
Environmental investments in the 2022 federal budget (submitted by the president and approved a few days ago by Congress — in which the ruling Morena party and its allies have a majority) was $41 billion pesos (about US $2 billion). But most of it — 34 billion pesos, or 83% of the total environmental budget — will go to hydraulic infrastructure managed by the National Water Commission (Conagua).
Only 2.16% of the environmental budget will go to the Commission for Natural Protected Areas (Conanp), responsible for protecting biodiversity and environmental services on 91 million hectares throughout the country; 5.95% will go to the National Forest Commission (Conafor), which oversees the country’s extensive forests; and a trifling 0.18% will go to the federal environmental agency (Profepa), responsible for protecting the environment.
On the other hand, the highly controversial federal program Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) was budgeted 29.5 billion pesos, and two megaprojects strongly criticized for their impacts on the environment and their contribution to climate change got a big chunk of the federal budget: about 63 billion pesos for the Maya Train and 45 billion pesos for the Dos Bocas oil refinery.
At today’s summit, beyond the differences of the three heads of state, the citizens of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico expect that their leaders at least bear in mind the raison d’être for the 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement: strengthening the longstanding friendship among the countries and their peoples; establishing a clear, transparent, predictable legal and commercial framework for business planning; promoting high levels of environmental protection; and furthering the aims of sustainable development.
Will these men be up to these tasks? Will they be able to find common ground amid their many differences? Will the Three Amigos be back in business?
Omar Vidal, a scientist, was a university professor in Mexico, is a former senior officer at the UN Environment Program and former director-general of the World Wildlife Fund-Mexico.
Richard C. Brusca is a research scientist at the University of Arizona, former executive director of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and author of over 200 research articles and 20 books.
The actor accused the company of using his image in an advertising campaign without his consent.
The Mexican subsidiary of a British multinational alcoholic beverage company has been ordered to compensate actor Gael García Bernal after using his image without authorization in a 2011 advertising campaign.
The Supreme Court ruled that Diageo México must pay García 40% of the revenue it obtained from sales of Johnnie Walker whisky during the period that its caminando con gigantes (walking with giants) campaign ran in September and October 2011.
It is unclear how much the Golden Globe-winning actor will receive.
Known for his appearances in films such as the Oscar-winning Babel, The Motorcycle Diaries and Wasp Network, García filed a lawsuit against the company in 2013. Eight years later, the Supreme Court ruled in his favor.
Under federal copyright law, the use of a person’s image in an advertising campaign without his or her permission is illegal.
Security forces on patrol at Thursday's crime scene.
Ten bodies were left hanging from an overpass in Zacatecas on Thursday, adding to the ongoing wave of violence the state has faced for most of the year.
The macabre display took place on highway 45 in the municipality of Cuauhtémoc on the border with Aguascalientes. Drivers called 911 after spotting the hanging bodies.
The identities of the victims remain unconfirmed.
It was the second such occurrence in a week. On Monday, three bodies were found hanging from a pedestrian overpass farther north outside of Fresnillo, Zacatecas’ second-largest city. And last weekend at least 16 people were killed in the state, police reports show.
In the aftermath of the murders, police in Loreto have stopped reporting for duty. Municipal authorities said that meetings are planned with police commanders to discuss whether and under what conditions the officers would return to their posts.
Mexican design is the central theme of Original, on until Sunday at Los Pinos in Mexico City.
Around 3,000 artisans from across Mexico are expected to attend the first event of Original, a Culture Ministry initiative to support indigenous textile creators and fight cultural appropriation.
The event begins Thursday at the Los Pinos Cultural Center in Mexico City, and will continue through Sunday, November 21. In addition to the artisans exhibiting their wares, there will be speakers, discussions and fashion shows, among other events. It will also feature the presence of national and international brands that may be interested in collaborating with artisans.
“Some people are surprised that there will be catwalks, but [the artisans] themselves want to see their work like that. And more than a fashion show, I see it as a bridge between worlds that normally do not touch, giving value to cultural elements,” Culture Minister Alejandra Frausto Guerrero said.
The event is more than just a textile expo: it was created in response to a string of incidents of what artisans and the Culture Ministry called plagiarism of indigenous designs by big-name brands like Anthropologie and Zara. The goal of Original is to take advantage of the same open market that spawned the appropriation, Frausto explained.
“Since those bad practices already showed us that the market is open, we are going to sell the originals, not copies,” Frausto said. “We are going to provide an alternative so that the creators themselves become the protagonists.”
The Original initiative furthers work that the Culture Ministry started by writing letters to the companies that used indigenous designs without permission. Though the letters made the ministry the target of some criticism, Frausto said they worked as intended: the articles of clothing targeted were taken off the market and 90% of the groups contacted were interested in collaborating with indigenous communities.
Countries that score poorly have weak or non-existent safeguards against defense sector corruption.
Mexico is at “very high risk” of corruption in its defense and security sectors, according to a global anti-corruption coalition.
The defense and security division of Transparency International published its 2020 Government Defense Integrity Index (GDI) this week. It shows that nearly two-thirds of the countries studied face a high to critical risk of corruption in their defense and security sectors.
Mexico, along with countries such as Nigeria, Turkey and China, is in the second worst “very high risk” category. The GDI assesses and scores 86 countries across five risk areas – financial, operational, personnel, political and procurement – before assigning an overall score.
Mexico scored 36 in financial risk, 0 in operational, 43 in personnel, 42 in political and 31 in procurement for an overall score of 30 out of 100.
“Countries that score poorly in the GDI have weak or non-existent safeguards against defense sector corruption and are more likely to experience conflict, instability, and human rights abuses,” Transparency International Defense & Security (D & S) said.
“The results come as global military spending has increased to some [US] $2 trillion annually, fueling the scale and opportunity for corruption.”
In Mexico, the current federal government has relied on the armed forces for a range of non-traditional tasks, including public security, infrastructure construction and vaccine distribution. Numerous analysts and organizations have criticized the increasing militarization of the country, a situation that places more public funds in the military’s hands and increases the opportunities for corruption.
In its Mexico brief, D & S said the military is one of the least transparent state institutions and benefits from a privileged position that exempts it from standard reporting, disclosure and transparency requirements.
“The defense budget, though published annually, is not detailed and lacks significant information related to arms acquisitions and does not contain any explanations or justifications for expenditure,” it said.
D & S also said that the “significant expansion” of the armed forces’ activities has led to widespread human rights abuses.
“Between 2014 and 2019, the National Human Rights Commission received nearly 3,000 complaints regarding military abuses. The militarization of public security, including the creation of the National Guard to replace the Federal Police as the government’s main law enforcement body echoes previous government approaches that contributed to serious cover-ups of human rights abuses, including enforced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial killings,” it said.
“Abuses of power are a particularly pressing risk when anti-corruption safeguards for personnel are weak. For instance, the code of conduct for military personnel does not provide specific guidance in relation to bribery, gifts, conflicts of interest and post-separation activities. There is also no record of how the code is enforced as the [Ministry] of National Defense does not keep records of this.”
In the operations section of its brief, D & S noted that public security and counter-organized crime operations involve “significant corruption risks” because they bring Mexican troops into close contact with “strong illicit economies and powerful organized crime actors.”
Despite that, “anti-corruption safeguards for operations are virtually non-existent,” D & S said.
“Mexico does not have a military doctrine that addresses corruption as a strategic issue during deployments and there is no evidence that corruption issues are taken into account in the forward planning of operations. Anti-corruption training also appears limited,” it said.
With regard to defense procurement, D & S said Mexico’s spending has risen considerably over the past five years but the increase has not been matched by a strengthening of governance processes for arms acquisitions.
New Zealand is the only country with a very low risk of corruption in its defense and security sectors, according to the GDI, while Germany and the United Kingdom are among eight countries with a low risk. Among the 18 countries with a critical risk are Algeria, Myanmar and Venezuela.
Federal forces carried out search operations in Zapopan on Wednesday.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) is suspected of abducting two members of the navy as retaliation for the arrest of the wife of the cartel’s leader.
Rosalinda González Valencia, wife of Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, was captured in Zapopan, Jalisco, on Monday by soldiers working in conjunction with the federal Attorney General’s Office and the National Intelligence Center.
Suspected CJNG members kidnapped a navy captain’s secretary and his driver in the same municipality the next day.
According to a report by the newspaper Reforma, the two navy personnel were abducted at a shopping center in Zapopan, located in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara. The vehicle in which they had been traveling, a white Jeep, was later found abandoned.
Meanwhile, federal forces carried out an operation in Zapopan on Wednesday to locate and capture El Mencho’s daughter, Laisha Michelle Oseguera González, and her partner, Christian Fernando Gutiérrez Ochoa. Marines raided homes in affluent neighborhoods of Zapopan but neither Oseguera nor Gutiérrez was found.
However, two other people were detained and questioned about the whereabouts of Laisha Oseguera, Reforma reported. Two properties that allegedly belong to members of Los Cuinis, a gang formed by Rosalinda González’s brothers that is considered the CJNG’s financial arm, were seized.
Federal forces also carried out operations in Jalisco, Nayarit, Michoacán and Guanajuato to locate El Mencho, according to military sources cited by Reforma. Some 450 elite soldiers and marines were involved in the search for cartel leader, who is wanted in both Mexico and the United States. Helicopters and drones supported the operations.
“He hides in the mountainous areas of Jalisco, Michoacán and Colima. We think he’s not in the cities anymore,” said Kyle Mori.
Later in 2019, there were reports that the capo was planning to return to his home town in the municipality of Aguililla, where the CJNG is engaged in a turf war with the Cárteles Unidos. However, there has been no confirmation that that occurred and El Mencho’s whereabouts remains a mystery.
President López Obrador and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard at a presidential press conference. Ebrard has stated that the proposed electricity reform is not up for discussion at the meeting.
United States lawmakers, the governor of Texas and business organizations in the U.S., Canada and Mexico have raised concerns about the Mexican government’s stance on energy and migration as President López Obrador attends Thursday’s North American Leaders Summit in Washington D.C.
A group of seven Democratic Party lawmakers led by Texas Representative Veronica Escobar wrote to United States President Joe Biden on Wednesday to urge him to address energy policy concerns in the “strongest possible terms” when he meets with López Obrador.
“As your administration hosts our United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) partners … this week, we write to share our increasingly growing concerns by Mexico’s disregard for the international commitments it has made to the companies in the energy sector under the USMCA and the climate consequences of such actions,” said the letter addressed to Biden and five other high-ranking U.S. officials.
“North American energy integration is key to our continued global competitiveness in relation to China, Russia and the European Union. Our energy markets, infrastructure and trade are already integrated and independent across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. In fact, North America is on the verge of energy self-sufficiency. Because of this, energy was enshrined as a central component of this historic agreement between our three nations. Mexico and … López Obrador, however, continue to willfully undermine this agreement to protect state-owned energy companies, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), while disadvantaging private investment in energy – including from the United States and Canada,” said Escobar and other Democrat lawmakers from Texas, California and Pennsylvania
The legislators said that “in addition to a slew of administrative and regulatory actions against private investors, President López Obrador has spearheaded major amendments to two laws – the Power Industry Law and the Hydrocarbons Law – to change market rules in favor of Pemex and CFE and against private companies.”
Senator John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, a Republican, wrote to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Wednesday to express his concern about López Obrador’s treatment of U.S. energy companies operating in Mexico.
“… While AMLO’s strategy to deal with Mexican drug cartels is using ‘hugs, not bullets’ his strategy to deal with American energy companies is quite different,” he wrote.
Kennedy noted that United States-owned fuel storage terminals have been shut down, adding that “multiple facilities” remain closed and under the the supervision of the National Guard “despite the companies’ continued efforts to work with AMLO’s regulators.”
“… AMLO’s strategy includes undermining other privately-owned, American renewable energy facilities. These companies could be the next to be seized, and it is unacceptable. It is obvious what is going on here – AMLO’s shutting down all foreign competition for his state-owned company, Pemex, and so far he’s getting zero resistance from U.S. officials in the Biden administration,” the senator wrote.
“… To protect energy investments in the region from AMLO’s nationalistic actions, I implore you to begin aggressive engagement with the AMLO administration and urge the White House to immediately initiate a dialogue on this specific issue between our countries.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott wrote to Biden to raise concerns about border security and energy and to ask the U.S. president to address them in his meetings with López Obrador.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott was one of several politicians and business leaders who have raised concerns about the Mexican government’s stance on immigration and energy reform.
“Despite numerous calls to action, your administration refuses to enforce our immigration laws and to secure our southern border. Unfortunately, Mexico has also been unwilling to stem the flow of illegal immigration and thus contributed to the open border situation,” he wrote.
“… I urge you to engage the Mexican government about ways to prevent the smuggling of individuals, drugs, and the continued flow of illegal immigrants into Texas,” Abbott said.
He also urged Biden to “take action to protect American assets from seizure by the Mexican government, potentially in violation of international trade laws.”
“… It has also come to my attention that the Mexican government is using militarized police forces to prevent the operation of U.S. businesses. … In order to protect energy investments in the region, I implore your administration to begin aggressive engagement with Mexico and immediately initiate a dialogue between our countries,” the governor wrote.
He said the closure of U.S.-owned facilities in Mexico came “on the heels of continued regulatory assault on American companies by the Mexican government at a time when energy prices are rising across our nation.”
The United States Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Business Coordinating Council, a Mexican umbrella organization that represents 12 business groups, also raised concerns about Mexico’s energy sector plans and policies in a letter addressed to Biden, López Obrador and Trudeau.
“The Canadian and U.S. private sectors are deeply concerned about efforts by the Mexican government to reduce private competition in the energy sector,” they said.
“Attempts to favor state-owned enterprises at the expense of renewable and other private energy providers only undermine investment certainty, put at risk ambitious shared goals to address climate change, and promise both added cost and diminished opportunity for our countries’ workers.”
Writing on behalf of the North American business community, the three organizations said that “it is imperative that the three governments hold each other accountable to full implementation of USMCA in order to reap the benefits the agreement provides as an economic framework for advancing our shared prosperity and job creation.”
They also said that the U.S., Mexican and Canadian governments must “guarantee open and transparent investment environments to enhance our continental competitiveness.”
In addition to energy and migration, Cuba could be a potentially contentious issue at Thursday’s trilateral summit given that López Obrador supports the Cuban government and the United States is a harsh critic of the regime.
“Our view is that we’re going to have positive results, we have an optimistic view of this meeting but that doesn’t mean that an issue on which there are different positions can’t arise,” he told reporters outside the Mexican Embassy in Washington.
“If the reform is approved next year there will be noise about it but at the moment the only thing that Biden can do is express concern,” said Adrián Duhalt, a postdoctoral fellow in Mexico energy studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
“I can’t imaging Trudeau or Biden telling AMLO ‘you have to get rid of the reform,’” said Juan Carlos Baker, managing director of Ansley Consultores and a trade negotiator for the previous federal government.
“… We can’t expect much from the meeting,” he said, adding that the main focus will be on the region’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
Referring to Mexico’s willingness or otherwise to uphold USMCA provisions, Baker said: “In Mexico, sometimes it seems that we want access to the United States market and our compatriots’ remittances but when it comes to taking on a deeper commitment we don’t like it and we return to the dialectic of sovereignty, full respect [for foreign countries] and non-intervention [in their internal affairs].”
The North American Leaders Summit is scheduled to take place at the White House late Thursday afternoon. López Obrador will also meet with Biden and Trudeau separately in the United States capital.
Racing patrol trucks at the starting line on a Zacatecas highway.
Two police officers in Zacatecas were relieved of their duties and will be punished for drag racing their patrol vehicles after a video of their race went viral.
The recording shows two police vehicles side by side, revving their engines while they wait for the starting signal. When a referee standing between the vehicles throws his hands down, they accelerate from the starting line.
The officers are from the municipality of Río Grande, 140 kilometers north of Zacatecas city.
Río Grande Mayor Mario Córdova said he contacted Police Chief Jaime González Barriento as soon as he became aware of the race. Córdova added that the officers’ actions “betray[ed] the trust of citizens,” and that his government “will not tolerate bad actions from any member of the municipal administration.”
“It is very sad that on this occasion we have to speak about things that do not benefit our municipality. We are already working on training so that our police officers do not make mistakes like these again,” the mayor added.
The Río Grande municipal government said it responded swiftly to the incident. “Corrective actions and sanctions have already been carried out in accordance with the law against the officers involved, who are away from work while their situations are determined,” it said in a statement.