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 Extended Isolation The full containment of the Covid-19 pandemic in Mexico will require much time than originally planned, so the stay-home period may have to be extended from the original April 30 to May 30, said Public Health Undersecretary Hugo López-Gatell, who is in charge of monitoring the spread of the disease. The announcement was made during
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By RICARDO CASTILLO There are two burning journalistic issues in Mexico that best portray not the real shape of things, but how feverish minds are trying their best to undermine the democratically and legally elected presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). Here are samples of two articles, one written by syndicated columnist Salvador García Soto and the published in
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By RICARDO CASTILLO U.S. OKs Anti-Covid-19 Exports to Mexico, Canada The U.S. export prohibition of anti-Covid-19 personal protection equipment to Mexico and Canada has been lifted, according to a memo issued by the U.S. Customs Border Protection Agency. The ban included ventilators, mouth covers and balloons, which can now be acquired by Mexico. On Tuesday, April 14, Mexican President Andrés
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The coronavirus pandemic, besides death and isolation, has brought about a political battle that Mexicans surely don’t need at this moment. Some, however, want it and see the pandemic as the right moment to carry it out. It makes sense to think that stopping the spread of the Covid-19 virus must be the top priority. Definitely, at
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Frustrated Entrepreneurs Business and politics have intentionally been kept centralized in Mexico City for decades in Mexico. But that arrangement seems to be falling apart as a result of the divide between commerce and industrial chambers leaders, specifically, Carlos Salazar Lomelín of the Business Coordination Council (CCE), Francisco Cervantes of the Industrial Chambers Confederation (Concamin) and Antonio
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Covid-19 Protection Arriving Mexico received the first plane load of medical materials from China on Wednesday, April 8, to supply its hospital personnel nationwide of much-needed protection while caring for patients infected with Covid-19. Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said that Mexico paid $56.481 million to acquire 180,000 pairs of globes, 16,174,000 surgery masks and 11.5 million
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By RICARDO CASTILLO “He slammed the door on us!” That quote is from Mexico’s Business Coordination Council (CCE) president Carlos Salazar Lomelín regarding the meeting he and other business leaders had on Monday, April 6, with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) concerning the nation’s booming unemployment quagmire. AMLO said his doors are open, but that he disagrees with
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Mexican Beaches Closed for Easter Mexican marines and municipal police have full control of Acapulco beaches to impede tourists from doing what they do best every Easter weekend: Enjoy their vacations. Guerrero Governor Hector Astudillo held a press conference on Tuesday, April 7, to “acknowledge the efforts being made by the persons participating in actions to keep
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Reverse Remittances While the Central Bank of Mexico has already begun whining about the potential drop in dollar-denominated remittances from the roughly 36 million Mexican workers in the United States, down to $29 billion in 2020, its U.S. counterpart, the Federal Reserve (Fed) is reporting that as of last January and through Thursday, April 2, Mexican investors
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