OPINION By RICARDO CASTILLO Old habits die hard! Mexico’s democratic political system is currently undergoing a return to an age-old political habit once known as “la sucesión” (“the succession”), in which one candidate was picked to replace the man in power. This succession routine became a political mainstay back in the days of one-party rule, and was ruthlessly enforced by
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By RICARDO CASTILLO This is the brief story of a tempest in a teapot, along with a brief analysis of what the political situation in Mexico is in the times of covid-19, at least for the day. The latest political snafu is a lot of fun, but it was also meaty enough to make for 24 more hours of political
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By RICARDO CASTILLO A Call to Civil Disobedience TVAzteca anchorman Javier Alatorre in the station’s nightly newscast “Hechos” (“Facts”)created a humongous scandal on Friday, April 17, after claiming the following: “As every night, Health Undersecretary Hugo López-Gatell led the (press) conference on Covid-19 in Mexico. But his figures and his conferences have become irrelevant. Furthermore, and to put it plainly,
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By RICARDO CASTILLO One day yes and the next day no. Again we’re getting bombarded with news of judges ordering the cancellation of the still-to-be-built Santa Lucía Airport located just northwest of the Teotihuacán pyramida, to the north of Mexico City. As of last week, 80 suits had been filed on environmental grounds stating that the damage the airport would
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The frictional mood at Mexico’s majority political party, the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), became evident on Monday, Aug. 19, as current Senate leader Martí Batres Guadarrama lost his bid for reelection to Mónica Fernández Balboa by 33 to 29 votes. Should all go well, Fernández Balboa will be confirmed next week and begin her position as Senate
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Do you remember Jose Antonio Meade Kuribreña? In case you don’t, let me tell you that he was the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) presidential candidate handpicked by former President Enrique Peña Nieto to run during the 2018 electoral campaign. Meade finished third in that race. Since then, Meade has seldom been heard from or about. But on
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By RICARDO CASTILLO More than three weeks ago, on June 4, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) announced that he would not attend the June 29 and 30 gathering of the Group of 20 – G-20 top economies of the world. “I’m making this announcement in advance now,” he said. “I am not going to the meeting of the Group
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The rumblings of a head-on clash between Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) press secretary, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, and journalists could be heard loud and clear since the last week of February. Back then, during a conference at the School for Social and Political Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Ramírez Cuevas announced
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Is there anything left for Mexico’s Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to celebrate now that they have been diagnosed as last-stage, end-of-life patients? Maybe not, other than the fact that in their deathbeds they are still desperately clinging to life. The stories of the two parties is extremely different, although their
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