By RICARDO CASTILLO The birthing pangs of Mexico’s new National Guard (GN) are being heard loud and clear across the country. But they do not come from within the newly created police deployed on the streets as of Sunday, June 30. The are from the nation’s Federal Police agents, who fear the changes that the GN represent. With the National
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Just when everyone in Mexico thought President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and tycoon entrepreneur Carlos Slim had frozen their relationship, last Friday, June 28, they reappeared together in the state of Oaxaca to relaunch the completion of the 150-kilometer-long, two-expanded-lane Milta-Tehuantepec super highway, with an 8-billion-peso investment. Was this event the beginning of the thawing of
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Now that Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) declared on Sunday, March 17, “the end of the neoliberal era,” a brief review of what it was seems to be in order. AMLO says that it lasted 36 years through six different presidents; his gauge is correct. He also said in his calling neoliberalism defunct that his
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By RICARDO CASTILLO What was the political gossip this week in Mexico? Definitely, the “denunciations” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) made of nine past officials for stealing money from the near-bankrupt, still-government-run electricity monopoly, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). As we covered in Pulse News Mexico, on Monday, Feb. 11, the president, during his daily press conference at the National Palace in downtown Mexico City,
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By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) presented a list on Monday, Feb. 11, of nine high-ranking former government officials – including former President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa — who he said either worked for or collaborated with foreign companies in the electricity sector and contributed to á gradual destruction of the state-owned National Electricity Commission (CFE) that led
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Given the uproar that President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is causing with his governance plans, he devoted the entire week of Nov. 19 to giving out interviews to all those requesting them – mainly radio and television – to clear up his points of view. In all this, it must be considered that, although we are still
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By RICARDO CASTILLO For a prelude to a presidency, surely that of Mexican President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has got too many dissonant chords. First it was his decision to control oil crude production that caused a market shakeup and further peso devaluation. Then came the cancelation of the ongoing construction of the new airport that sent markets skidding and pumped the
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By RICARDO CASTILLO It was 30 years ago that Mexico took a veritable turn towards becoming a democratic system. At the time, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) still ruled the nation. Yet the man who became president on Dec. 1, 1988, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, noticed that the lights had changed and that the PRI had to let go of
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Here’s the sequence of events that led to a market selloff at the Mexican Stock Exchange (Bolsa Mexicana de Valores) that provoked the loss of nearly 6 percentage points and nearly 90 billion pesos over the last week, mostly for banks. First, on Wednesday, Nov. 7, came the not-so-casual news from the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) political party majority leader
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is not yet president of Mexico, but he’s already indirectly issued his first executive order through the Mexican Senate. On Monday, Nov. 6, his first fully fulfilled campaign promise to strip former presidents of their juicy pension went into effect as Senate President Martí Batres ordered the publication in the Official Gazette of the
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