By RICARDO CASTILLO Suddenly – but not unexpectedly – the once-powerful National Education Workers Union (SNTE) leader Elba Esther Gordillo is back on track to regain the presidency of Mexico’s two-million-member-strong union, the largest in all Latin America. During the administration of former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), Gordillo was thrown in the slammer on several charges, including embezzlement
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The next round of elections in Mexico is just around the corner. slated for Sunday. June 2. There will be political activity on different basis in six different states. Clearly, the attention will be most focused in the states of Puebla and Baja California. where elections for governor will be attracting the bulk of attention. They are,
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Ninety years ago today, on March 4, 1929, Mexican history took a turn to become the nation it is today. Modern Mexican history began with the foundation of the National Revolutionary Party (PNR), a political organization that would change name in 1940 to the Party of the Mexican Revolution and in 1945 to what it is today
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By RICARDO CASTILLO There’s no question about it: Mexico’s once-prolific cash cow has run dry. The country’s economic national pride, the state-run oil giant Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), is now in financial straits, with its latest corporate report showing that just in the last quarter of 2018, it “lost” over 2 billion pesos. That definitely makes Pemex the only oil company
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eNapoleón Gómez Urrutia, head of the Mexican Miners and Metal Smelters Union. Photo: veracruzenlasnoticas.com By RICARDO CASTILLO The wheel of fortune has made a full circle for Mexican Senator Napoleón Gómez Urrutia. In 2006, Gómez Urrutia, then — and still — leader of the Mexican Miners and Metal Smelters Union, fled Mexico Canada-bound, charged with a $55 million embezzlement of union funds. Had he
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Even though it’s been approved by the Chamber of Deputies, and will surely be fast-tracked by the Mexican Senate, the integration of the National Guard (GN) remains a farfetched endeavor. The approved bill provides for the GN to section off Mexico into 266 different commands. Initially, the National Guard will be made up of as many as 50,000 officers from the
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The good news is that by moving the Mexican Army to take over Pemex oil refineries, refined fuels theft stopped almost overnight. The bad news is that, nowadays, the residents of the Guanajuato, Querétaro, Michoacán, Jalisco and State of Mexico (Edoméx) can´t get a liter of green or red gas for their vehicles. Theft stopped, but the
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The rumblings of the upcoming Constitutional Wars are growing thunderous in Mexico’s cloudy political skies. Over the past two weeks, the group of 12 National Action Party (PAN) governors across the nation are threatening a rebellion against the “dictatorship” of President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his majority in both houses of Congress through the National
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By RICARDO CASTILLO It was 30 years ago that Mexico took a veritable turn towards becoming a democratic system. At the time, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) still ruled the nation. Yet the man who became president on Dec. 1, 1988, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, noticed that the lights had changed and that the PRI had to let go of
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Unwittingly, Mexico has now returned to the exact same quagmire that it revolted against more than 70 years ago: the one-party political system. Today, the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) has both the presidency and a majority control in both houses of Congress, winning 53 percent of the vote in the July 1 elections. For at least the next three years, whatever
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