By RICARDO CASTILLO Pandemic Traffic Lights On Monday, May 11, the federal government will hold an analytical meeting to establish, perhaps as early as Sunday, May 17, what Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) called “a sort of traffic light” to start reopening the nation’s economy back to business as usual. AMLO said that municipalities where there are no
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By RICARDO CASTILLO This is an article I should have written many years ago, but, at the time, I did not have enough reason to do so. Not until now, when it just so happens that in the natural calendar year of 2020, the second Sunday in May falls on May 10. That, of course, is this coming Sunday. What
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Jacobson’s Hearsay Interview Former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson probably regrets giving an interview to reporter J. Jesús Esquivel that ran on Sunday, May 3, in Mexico’s weekly magazine Proceso. Esquivel mangled the information so badly that Jacobson had to send a set of tweets to claim that she didn’t say what Esquivel said she said.
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Don’t Whine Later! The programmed meeting of the Permanent Committee of the Mexican Congress to discuss the revamping of the administration’s Expenditures Bill has been postponed for at least two weeks due to the expanding coronavirus pandemic. Chamber of Deputies Majority Leader Mario Delgado Carrillo said that he had talked over the phone with Senate President Mónica
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Budget Change Controversy Harsh times demand harsh measures, and this week Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) sent a bill to the Chamber of Deputies proposing to rearrange the government’s budget to meet the inevitable health and financial crisis looming for the nation. AMLO’s adversaries, through the non-governmental organization México Evalúa (Evaluates) has claimed that the
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By RICARDO CASTILLO AMLO: “I’m not an ornamental vase” There must have been more to the matter than met the naked eye. If not, why did Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) raise so much hell over it? On Sunday, April 26, the Mexican Business Association and the investment department of the Inter-American Development Bank (BID) announced that they
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By RICARDO CASTILLO It’s either one or the other, no in between. Either Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is at war with the press, or the press is at war with him. Maybe both. Since being elected president of Mexico, AMLO has been taking a pummeling from the media on a daily basis. Of course, there are the
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By RICARDO CASTILLO USMCA to Take Effect July 1 The trilateral trade treaty known in the United States as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), in México as the T-MEC, and in Canada by the same old term as the previous accord, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), will most definitely go into effect on July 1. The announcement was
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Getting Back to Work The covid-19 lockdown is taking its toll everywhere in Mexico. The truth is, each and every able body in the country would rather be working than inventing in pastimes at home. But some who are already moving ahead of the pandemic are paving the road for when the moment comes to restart the
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Critics are screaming their throats out claiming that Mexico is in a deep crisis! The daily answer from President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) seems to be that Brooklyn street expression when you want to put down someone irately pointing their angry piping hot finger at you (straight out of Martin Scorsese’s 1970s classic “Taxi Driver”): “You
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