By RICARDO CASTILLO Mexico’s new brand of diplomacy is about to undergo its first acid test. On Friday, Jan. 4, the Foreign Relations ministers or secretaries of the 14 Latin American nations that make up the Lima Group (a multilateral body that was established following the Lima Declaration on Aug. 8, 2017, in the Peruvian capital under which representatives of 17 countries
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Three curious things happened during the first week of Mexico’s 64th Congress with the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM) known for short as the Green Party. The Green Party, or whatever’s left of it, is now administered by former Senator and now-Deputy Carlos Puente, who during the introduction of the new parties last Sept. 1 at the
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The top criticism of outgoing Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and his governance team has been repeated time and time again. “They just don’t understand that they don’t understand,” was the general consensus of top columnists and political observers across Mexico as the president sent his last State of the Nation Address to the joint session of Congress (the
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By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS Populist leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) alliance, Juntos Haremos Historia (Together We Shall Make History), won a landslide victory in his bid for the Mexican presidency on Sunday, July 1. Even before the official preliminary count was in, his opponents, Ricardo Anaya Cortés, José Antonio Meade Kuribreña and Jaime Heliodoro
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By RICARDO CASTILLO It may be an inexact science, but it’s in the air in Mexico these days. In colloquial Spanish, it’s called “rumorología,” which literally translates in English to “rumor-ology.” The flood of rumors preceding the upcoming Sunday, July 1, election is massive. The loudest rumor is that there is a mega-fraud in the making to put the “official”
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Mexico’s third and final presidential electoral debates on Tuesday, June 12, only served to confirm the until-then prevailing trend shown in the polls all along, and they were a repeat of the previous two debates. In short, neither candidates Ricardo Anaya nor José Antonio Meade managed to impose themselves sufficiently to earn a not-so-glorious second place in voter preference, while frontrunner
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The last lap of Mexico’s 2018 general elections begins today, Tuesday, June 12, with the four presidential candidates meeting in Mérida, Yucatán, for the third and final debates organize by the National Electoral Institute (INE.) As expected, unusual moves are happening. The most notorious is the turn of events stemming out of a stumping speech by the “For Mexico to
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Mexico’s top tycoons are slamming down the electoral panic button! One after another, the owners of the nation’s top fortunes are asking their employees to “weigh the balance” (sopesar, in Spanish) of their vote and vote for continuity and stability. What does that mean? Do not vote for the Together We’ll Make History three-party coalition candidate Andrés
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Mexican senate candidate Nestora Salgado has filed slander and defamation charges against Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) presidential candidate José Antonio Meade. During the May 20 presidential debate, Meade said that “criminal kidnapper” Nestora and Miners and Metal Workers’ Union leader Napoleón Gómez were “convicts” who did not have the right to become legislators. Fake news on the part of
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Videgaray seems to be a master chef for all the dishes in the nation’s formidable international menu. But being a jack-of-all-trades has its shortcomings, and, indeed, Videgaray is now in hot water many reasons. FIRST: Last Monday, May 21, Videgaray convened with the so-called Lima Group’s (GL, for Grupo de Lima) representatives, comprised by
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