By RICARDO CASTILLO There are two ways of looking at Mexico’s 2021 midterm elections: On the one hand, there will be the anticipated participation of the country’s seven existing political parties. On the other, there are still-undetermined organizations seeking registration with the National Electoral Institute (INE), and it is not clear whether they will get in or not. According to
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By RICARDO CASTILLO First Coronavirus Case in Mexico Mexico’s Health Secretariat was notified on Saturday, Feb. 1, by the Los Angeles International Airport medical authorities of the confirmed case of a 37-year-old Chinese national and Wuhan native who had visited Mexico as of Jan. 21. Taxi service company Uber acknowledged that the infected person used at least two of its
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Which Border Wall Did Trump Mean? Oh, my God! Not again!!! U.S. President Donald Trump reignited his 2016 campaign war cry while stumping in Wildwood, New Jersey, on Tuesday, Jan. 28, saying that he would make Mexico pay for the border wall. After describing costs and the 400-mile-stretch already built of his “beautiful” wall, Trump capped his
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By RICARDO CASTILLO There have been several interpretations to what happened on Sunday, Jan. 26, during the “National Congress” held by one block of Mexico’s National Regeneration Movement (Morena) political party led by Bertha Luján, in which the “assembly” voted in Alfonso Ramírez Cuellar as “interim president,” with the job of paving the way to hold smooth elections
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Happy Birthday, Carlos Slim Just as Mexico’s and Latin America’s wealthiest man, Carlos Slim, was gearing up to celebrate his 80th birthday on Tuesday, Jan. 28, the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) delivered a special gift that surely the tycoon did not appreciate: a fine for nearly 1.39 billion pesos. The fine applied directly to mismanagement of accounting
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By RICARDO CASTILLO A year ago at this time, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) declared a full-fledged frontal war on fuel thieves, nicknamed “huachicoleros.” In just a few months, the hordes of fuel duct-spiking gangs were deprived of gasoline as the lines were dried out, and by March, AMLO announced the huachicol had been stopped by as much
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By RICARDO CASTILLO March for Truth, Justice and Peace The several thousand participants in the so-called March for Truth, Justice and Peace on Sunday, Jan. 26, were demanding that Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) government come up with a strategy to put an end to the apparently endless and seemingly eternal rising number of murders that Mexico is
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Zero Coronavirus Cases Regardless of the initial alarm in Mexico about potential coronavirus cases, on Thursday, Jan. 23, Health Secretary Jorge Alcocer Varela emphatically denied “any confirmed cases” of the disease. There were, however, two confirmed reports of persons “under observation,” who were finally declared to be ill with “common colds.” One was a doctor in Reynosa,
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The Real Border Wall at Guatemala While Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard has consistently rejected the idea that there is a crisis at Mexico’s Guatemalan border, new caravans of various sizes continue to arrive there, looking to cross through Mexico to the United States. Their crossing, however, is being impeded by the armed Mexican National Guardsmen,
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By RICARDO CASTILLO First of all, let me clarify the difference between the word “occurrence” in English and “ocurrencia” in Spanish: In theory, they could be interpreted as being the same, but as you will see, there are significant differences in meaning between the two words. The reason for this clarification is that, last week, I mistranslated the word “maestro”
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