OPINION By JOSÉ ANTONIO MEADE Part of an ongoing series from the Wilson Center* It has become common place to speak about the disruptions brought about by the covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine in everything from global value chains, inflation, food availability and economic performance. This has led many to seek alternative solutions to improve supply chain resilience and
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OPINION By MARK LORENZANA Veteran Mexican-American journalist Jorge Ramos, in an article for the now-defunct U.S. political and opinion website Splinter, wrote about the curious Mexican political custom of “el dedazo,” which, when translated roughly, means “to point a finger.” “As a young man, I was obsessed with the political phenomenon of ‘el dedazo’ in Mexico. It didn’t make sense
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By ALEJANDRO ENVILA FISHER The future of Mexico’s centralist National Institutional Party (PRI) will be contingent to a single concept: loyalty. The PRI lost all the governorships in its power in June for two reasons: the depth of its discredit (derived more from its arrogance than from the failure of the governments it led), and the lack of loyalty of
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By RICARDO CASTILLO AMLO, Biden in Virtual Meet On Monday, March 1, U.S. President Joe Biden is slated to hold a virtual conference with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). This will be the second virtual gathering both presidents have, the last one having been on Jan. 22. According to White House sources, the two are expected to discuss
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By SILVIO CANTO, JR. Although I live in the United States, as a Latino, I tend to follow Latin American politics closely, particularly in the case of Mexico. And in recent days, I’ve spoken with several of my Mexican friends and they’re all singing the same song: How did this guy Andrés Manuel López Obrador guy (AMLO) ever manage to
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The word “recession” currently seems to be striking terror in the heart of most Mexicans. And given the humongous volume of antagonism President Andrés López Obrador (AMLO) is confronting, the word is even more threatening to his opponents. Not only that, AMLO is fighting a war of economic terminology in which the truth is in the voice
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Definitely the outstanding image in Mexico for the week July 8-12 was the stone-cold face of Arturo Herrera Gutiérrez as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador appointed him the government’s new finance secretary. Herrera Gutiérrez looked as if he was attending his own funeral. The fact is that a lot of political pundits noticed the grave gesture, that
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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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By RICARDO CASTILLO Ninety years ago today, on March 4, 1929, Mexican history took a turn to become the nation it is today. Modern Mexican history began with the foundation of the National Revolutionary Party (PNR), a political organization that would change name in 1940 to the Party of the Mexican Revolution and in 1945 to what it is today
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Last week, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto went on an unprecedented spree of interviews with three major television stations (Televisa, Imagen and TVAzteca). He was also interviewed by the leftist daily La Jornada and other newspapers. But should the president be doing this nowadays? There are a number of reasons he is launching this media blitz. First off,
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