By RICARDO CASTILLO Outages Set Off Political Sparks The electricity outages on Monday, Feb. 15, in six northern Mexican states may have been caused by the freezing temperatures affecting Texas, but they set off a new round of heated debates at Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies over President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO’s) Electricity Bill. Beyond Texas’ pumped gas shortage,
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By RICARDO CASTILLO MLK III at Guerrero Homage Martin Luther King III, the eldest son of U.S. civil rights activist MLK, Jr., was the keynote speaker Sunday, Feb. 14, at the homage paid to the memory of Mexico’s second president, Vicente Guerrero. Guerrero was killed 190 years ago at Cuilápa, Oaxaca. Guerrero, a descendant of African slaves brought to Mexico,
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By KELIN DILLON Over 196.7 billion pesos in investment into Mexico’s energy sector are now in jeopardy, following Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) controversial proposals to reform the nation’s electric industry, according to opponents of the bill. The proposed law would allow Mexico’s government-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) to gain priority over private energy plants to upload their
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By RICARDO CASTILLO AMLO on an Electrical Collision Course Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) clearly sent a “suggestion” to the Chamber of Deputies in regards to their discussions over the increasingly controversial bill regulating the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). “Do not change even an iota of the text” that they had received from him for a fast-track
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Ancira Negotiations Imprisoned Mexican steel tycoon Alonso Ancira’s lawyer, José Luis Castañeda, continued negotiations at the Mexico City North Penitentiary late Tuesday, Feb. 9, and finally came up with a figure that his client will have to pay to win his freedom. In an out-of-court negotiation still to be ratified, Mexico’s state-run oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex)
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By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS After a two-week hiatus inside his private quarters at the National Palace to recover from a bout with covid-19, a somewhat thinner, somewhat paler, but no less opinonated and no less verbose Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) returned to his early morning daily press conferences on Monday, Feb. 8. And while the Mexican president told reporters that
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Gags on Twitter and Facebook? A bill to “regulate the performance of social networks” in Mexico is due to be introduced in Congress this week by Senator Ricardo Monreal. The proposed bill would regulate social network companies like Twitter and Facebook on a national scale and would prevent them from censuring accounts of people or entities that
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By RICARDO CASTILLO There is no doubt that the Mexican Supreme Court’s harsh blow against President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) Energy Bill on Wednesday, Feb. 3, which shot down 22 articles of the controversial edict pushed through last year by Energy Secretary Rocío Nahle, wobbled the administration. The court voted against the bill because of what it considered radical
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Vaccines Registration Underway, Sort of… As of Tuesday, Feb. 2, the Mexican government has opened up its Natonal Vaccination Program of covid-19 vaccines to everyone over the age of 60, allowing those eligible to register on a webpage run by the Interior Secretariat (SeGob). In theory, everyone in Mexico over age 60 — including legal foreign residents
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By KELIN DILLON Mexico’s private business sector has accused Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) proposed reform to the nation’s electric industry of being an “indirect expropriation” of investments made by private companies. The proposed law would allow Mexico’s state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) to gain preference over private energy plants to upload their production to the grid, limiting
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