By SILVIO CANTO, JR. On Saturday, Jan. 23, U.S. President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador spoke by phone. According to news reports, the Mexican president said that the United Stats has pledged $4 billion to Central America. in development investment programs. I guess that Biden is hoping that money going south will keep caravans from going
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Political Lockup No sooner had Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) backed down Friday, Jan. 22, on permitting states government and private businesses to purchase anti-covid vaccines, then the 10 governors belonging to the opposition group Federalist Alliance (AF) fired back, complaining that AMLO’s change of mind had come “too late.” “The authorization to join this
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By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS More than 9,000 Hondurans refugees headed to the U.S. border were blocked by Guatemalan soldiers on Saturday, Jan. 16, not far from where they entered the country illegally. The migrants crossed into Guatemala in a caravan that had — in the course of just 24 hours, swelled from 3,000 to triple that size — in the hopes
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By RICARDO CASTILLO A Birds Story Birds of a feather flock together, says the old adage. This week began with U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday, Jan. 11, visiting part of his “wonderful wall” in Alamo, a township just east to McAllen, along the Mexico-Texas border. He took the occasion to praise Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) with
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Ebrard and Sullivan Talk Migration A new era in Mexican-U.S. diplomatic relations began Wednesday, Jan. 6, with a video conference between Foreign Relations Secretary (SRE) Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón and President-elect Joe Biden’s National Security spokesman, Jake Sullivan. Both agreed that the most important issue in a new bilateral agenda is to collaborate in order to have a
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XINHUA A Mexican federal judge sentenced two men to nine and 12 years in prison, respectively, for transporting 118 undocumented Central American migrants via cargo truck through southeastern Mexico, the federal Fiscal General’s Office said on Saturday, Dec. 5. According to the Mexican prosecutor’s office, the judge, based in the state of Chiapas, ruled that the two individuals were guilty
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The Return of the Swaps The U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) struck a deal with eight national central banks, including the Banco de México (Banxico), to back up dollar-denominated loans in global markets in an attempt to stabilize the exchange market, now under stiff pressure from the Covid19 pandemic. Banxico issued a press release explaining: “The swap mechanism
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By RICARDO CASTILLO There was really very little to discuss on Sunday, July 21, during the just-over-an-hour-long meeting in Mexico City between visiting U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard. It was clear previous to the meet that Mexico had achieved the goals demanded of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO)by U.S. President Donald
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By SILVIO CANTO, JR. Over the course of the last six months, I’ve reported that many of my friends in Mexico have been shocked by their country’s newly founded tolerance of illegal immigration. This goes against the very grain of what I knew of Mexico to be years ago. The Mexico that I remember was brutal — and I mean
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By RICARDO CASTILLO On Monday, July 15, U.S. President Donald Trump announced the implementation of a new rule which would deny immigrants who arrive through Mexican territory seeking asylum access through the southern border. Under the new regulation, all Central American asylum seekers on the way to the United States would be required to first pursue safe haven in a
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