By RICARDO CASTILLO The candidates of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO)National Regeneration Movement (Morena) for the states of Baja California and Puebla, Jaime Bonilla Valdez and Miguel Barbosa Huerta, respectively, walked away with resounding victories over their competitors for the gubernatorial races on Sunday, June 2. In Baja California, a state that had been governed by the conservative
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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 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 A small incident provoked by a well-known journalist highlighted a problem that is beleaguering the current Mexican electoral process. Over the past weekend, the news that political columnist Ricardo Alemán had been fired by two television stations was news. Curiously enough, Alemán was not fired for any content in his two political programs. He was fired for forwarding
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Monday morning blues and indignation? You bet. Definitely for two independent presidential hopefuls, it was a weekend full of electoral turmoil. Their candidacies were rejected by the National Electoral Institute’s (INE) Committee of Prerogatives and Political Parties, which last Friday decided that pre-candidates Jaime Rodríguez Calderón and Armando Ríos Piter did not meet the minimum of signatures
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Welcome Mexico to the New Year, which effectively starts today Jan. 8, 2018. Over are the fiestas that traditionally start on Dec. 12 with the celebration of the nation’s spiritual mother, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and ended last Saturday, Jan. 6, with the celebration of the Three Wise Men fiesta. Naturally, over the holidays, there
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