By MARK LORENZANA After heaping praise on Delfina Gómez Álvarez for her tenure as head of Mexico’s Secretariat of Public Education (SEP), Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) in his daily morning press conference on Monday, Aug. 15, officially announced the appointment of Leticia Ramírez to take over the leadership of the SEP. López Obrador assured the audience at the
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By MARK LORENZANA Senator Beatriz Paredes of the centralist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) expressed her interest in seeking the presidency of Mexico in 2024 with the Va por México coalition — an electoral alliance composed of the PRI, the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) — to challenge the ruling party of
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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 MARK LORENZANA Some independent journalists who attend the daily morning press conferences of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) are allegedly paid thousands of pesos by “companies, politicians and unions” to ask planted questions that are “disguised as complaints.” The “Bajo Reserva” column of Mexican daily newspaper El Universal, on Thursday, Aug. 4, reported that YouTube content creator and
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By MARK LORENZANA Javier May, director of Mexico’s National Fund for the Promotion of Tourism (Fonatur), promised residents from the town of Pomuch in the southeast Mexican state of Campeche that the profits from the Tren Maya — one of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) controversial pet megaprojects — will be used to increase pension payments to senior citizens.
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OPINION By MARK LORENZANA In October 2005, Felipe Calderón defeated Santiago Creel in the primary of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), and went on to become the standard bearer for the PAN in the 2006 Mexican general election. Calderón won 58 percent of the vote, while former Interior Secretary Santiago Creel received 33 percent. Former Environment Secretary Alberto Cardenas
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By MARK LORENZANA Allegations of fraud have plagued the Mexican Food System (Segalmex), an agency created by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) — the latest of which involves irregularities of at least 9.5 billion pesos, according to a report by Mexican daily newspaper Reforma on Tuesday, July 26. In the Reforma report, Segalmex in 2021 allegedly failed to
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OPINION By MARK LORENZANA Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) loves delivering long-winded speeches. Anyone who has the stamina (and nothing else to do) should tune in sometime to his daily morning press conferences at the Palacio Nacional to experience firsthand how truly agonizing these morning sessions can be — they last for hours. U.S. President Joe Biden had
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