By RICARDO CASTILLO Migrants Try to Barge into Mexico Throngs of Central American migrants Sunday, Jan. 19, continued to gather along the Guatemalan border on Sunday, Jan. 19, with the intent of moving through Mexico to the United States. On Saturday. Jan. 18, approximately 1,500 of the mostly Honduran migrants attempted to stage their first show of force
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By RICARDO CASTILLO U.S. Senate Approves USMCA While all the hoopla right now in the U.S. Senate is about President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, in Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is celebrating the approval of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). “This brings to an end an important stage because (the treaty) has been now approved by the
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Expectations in Mexico grew high on Tuesday, Jan. 14, after U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that the vote on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) could come as early as “this week.” But at the same time in Mexico, everyone is keeping mum, hoping that the USMCA – a commercial and nonpolitical treaty – is shoved out
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Dos Bocas Bubble Bursts The news was sensational. Chinese Ambassador to Mexico Zhi Qingqiao told reporters during the celebration of a China Day event organized by Mexico’s Economy Secretariat on Monday, Jan.13, that Chinese banks were investing $600 million in the Dos Bocas Refinery, currently under construction in the southeastern state of Tabasco. Immediately after
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By RICARDO CASTILLO This is yet another article about the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, but to make sense of the matter, let me start somewhere else. Once the U.S. star spangled banner was flying over the National Palace in Mexico City — back on Sept 13, 1847, to be exact – then-U.S. President James Polk was asked, with the new conquest
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Child Gunman Shocks Nation Eleven-year old elementary school student José Ángel Ramos requested permission to go to the bathroom on Friday, Jan. 10, but when he did not return, English teacher María Assaf Medina went looking for him in the washroom and found him. José Ángel had changed out of his uniform and dressed himself
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Mexico’s Economy Shielded In one of the multiple events of the four-day-long 31st Reunion of Ambassadors and Consuls 2020 organized by the Foreign Relations Secretariat (SRE) from Jan. 7 to Jan. 10, Treasury Secretary Arturo Herrera took the forum as an opportunity to claim that Mexico – one year after Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO)
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By RICARDO CASTILLO More often than not, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) visits indigenous communities where the locals not only deck him out in local wear but also crown him with flowers and smoke from aromatic native resin copal to keep away evil spirits. Along with the semi-religious ceremonies – with little spirituality but lots of showmanship for
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By RICARDO CASTILLO 2020 News Forecasts An old adage used to say that someday news would travel so fast that we would know the facts about a news item even before it happened. I’ve got news for you; that’s no longer an adage. Hence, here’s a vague glimpse of the shape of news to come in Mexico during 2020, which
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Bolivia’s pro tempore president, Janine Añez, has very little governance experience, so she’s decided that to make her stay at the presidency she must pick a fight with other nations. Right after coming to power on Nov. 15, her first move was to break diplomatic relations with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Maduro was most happy with that
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