By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS

No Vaccines for Doctors

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is busy bragging about his administration’s rollout of its mishmash covid vaccines, claiming that it is on course to inoculate all the nation’s elderly population by the end of April (which it is not; there are numerous cases of eligible Mexicans who registered on the government’s online vaccine page and were NOT allowed to get the vaccine because even though they had a confirmed registration number, they were thrown out of the system and denied the shot, and Pulse News Mexico has a long list of antidotal cases verifying this fact).

But while the government has managed to vaccinate most public hospital medical personnel, private hospital workers, including doctors and nurses working directly with covid-19 patients, have been excluded from vaccine protection.

After a spree of press reports (mostly in conservative media not under the dictates of AMLO) exposing this disturbing situation, a reporter finally confronted the president on the issue during his daily presser on Friday, April 9.

True to form, López Obrador responded by instead boasting about how much his administration has done to get vaccines into Mexican arms (even by the government’s own accounts, as of April 9. the country had barely managed to give 10 million people their first vaccine, hardly a drop in the bucket for a nation with a population of 130 million).

But when the reporter insisted that AMLO respond to his question, the president simply said that the private doctors should wait their turn (the AMLO-ese equivalent of “let them eat cake”).

AMLO, who notoriously manifested his distrust of and disdain for private physicians in May of last year, went on to say that the government’s vaccine rollout is being conducted “fairly and with equal treatment for all Mexicans.”

According to the federal government, 90 percent of public sector covid-19 front-line health workers have been vaccinated, but at least three private sector physician organizations have alleged that over half of their doctors are still being denied inoculations.

It seems that doctors who work for the government are more equal than those who don’t.

Salgado Macedonio Gets Yet Another Reprieve 

AMLO likes to say that his administration will not tolerate corruption, but rape? … well, that’s another story.

AMLO’s close friend and political ally Félix Salgado Macedonio has been accused of rape (not just sexual assault, outright rape) by at least three different women, but that “little detail” (along with the fact that Salgado Macedonio is still being investigated for allegedly accepting payoffs from drug cartels during his stint as mayor of Acapulco between 2005 and 2008).

Nevertheless, it seems that, come hell or high water, Salgado Macedonio is on course to become the next governor of Mexico’s Pacific state of Guerrero.

Salgado Macedonio was denied the right to run as AMLO’s leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena) candidate for the gubernatorial seat in Mexico’s upcoming June midterm elections by both the National Electoral Institute (INE) and its regional subsidiary, the Guerrero Electoral Institute for not declaring all of his campaign funding.

But on Friday, April 9, after a little presidential nudge from the National Palace, the upper chamber of Mexico’s Electoral Court of the Judiciary of the Federation (TEPJF) revoked the INE decision canceling the registration of Salgado Macedonio (along with one against another Moreno candidate who had been denied registration on similar grounds, Raúl Morón Orozco, who is going for governor of Michoacán).

Salgado Macedonio upped the ante even further on Saturday, April 10, ominously telling reporters that if he is not allowed to run for governor, “there will be no elections in Guerrero.”

The INE was given two days to “reconsider” its judgement against Salgado Macedonio, and will no doubt see the error of its ways and reinstate AMLO’s friend as the Morena candidate.

What AMLO wants, AMLO gets.

Another Short-Lived Posting for Roberta

After just over three months at the post of border czar, former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson will be leaving the position at the end of April, the White House announced on Friday, April 9.

Jacobson, who served just two years in Mexico as an ambassador, was tasked by the Joe Biden administration with trying to sort out the growing flux of undocumented immigrants, particularly unaccompanied minors, who are flooding into the United States.

But following a 100 percent increase in the number of unaccompanied migrant children arriving just between February and March alone, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP,Biden switched gears late last month and decided to place the issue in the hands of his vice president, Kamala Harris.

But while there have been rumors of a power tiff between Jacobson and Harris, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement Friday that Jacobson’s tenure was long planned to cover only the administration’s first 100 days.

Sullivan also commended Jacobson for “having shaped our relationship with Mexico as an equal partner, having launched our renewed efforts with the Northern Triangle nations of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and having underscored this administration’s commitment to re-energizing the U.S. immigration system.”

Meanwhile, the number of migrants taken into custody by U.S. border agents hits its highest level in nearly 20 years in March, including record numbers of teenagers and children arriving without parents, and the figures are only expected to increase over the coming months.

Rewriting History

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once famously quipped, “History is written by the victors.”

Now, it seems that AMLO, who won his third bid for president by a landslide in 2018, wants to make sure that his leftist National Regeneration Movement party continues to be victorious by indoctrinating the country’s youth with his own version of Mexican history from grammar school on.

On Sunday, April 11, López Obrador announced that his government would be rewriting public elementary school textbooks, which he said currently present a “distorted version” of the nation’s history as presented by what he called the “theorists of the oligarchs.”

Speaking during a visit to the Puebla village of Ayoxuxtla, AMLO said, “Those who imposed so-called neoliberal policies called it the ‘End of History’.”

AMLO went on to say that the neoliberal administrations that preceded him had obscured the memories of some of the country’s most important historical heroes, including Miguel Hidalgo, Benito Juárez, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.

AMLO alleged that these conservative administrations has “changed the contents of textbooks, removing civics and taking away ethics.”

Earlier in the week AMLO announced that the Public Educations Secretariat (SEP) would be reworking 18 primary school textbooks to be used in this year’s national education program.

...April 12, 2021