By RICARDO CASTILLO Pressure to Restart Work Pressure on the Mexican government to get the economy going again is mounting from all sides. Health Secretary Jorge Alcocer, who is responsible for determining which municipalities and industries can reopen, however, does not yet have an answer. “In general there are approximately 990 municipalities applying to restart, but only about a third
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By RICARDO CASTILLO 69 New Barracks for National Guardsmen Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) spent the weekend inaugurating new barracks for the National Guard in the states of Jalisco, Michoacán and Guanajuato, the latter two known for a high presence of organized criminal gangs. Mexican Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said each barrack will house somewhere between 120 and
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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 EARL ANTHONY WAYNE, former U.S. ambassador to Mexico
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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 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 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 There is no custom in Mexico of having one publication declare a worthwhile personality “the man” (now “person”) of the year like there is in the United States, where Time magazine has been doing for nearly 100 years. But recently, several Mexican journalists have speculated that if there were such a notion in Mexico, who would be
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Additional Tag-ons to the USMCA No sooner had U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to the House of Representatives for a vote on Friday, Dec. 13, than Democratic Majority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MA) introduced initiative HR5430, which tags five U.S. inspectors to oversee union elections in private companies in Mexico. Immediately, Mexico’s USMCA
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