By RICARDO CASTILLO Haphazard School Kickoff The school year in Mexico kicked off on Monday, Aug. 24, with all of the failures expected from a nation not accustomed to remote education. With classes at home, parents from all over the country complained first about the communications system failure as teachers responsible for their groups groped to find alternative education methods.
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By RICARDO CASTILLO A War of Leaks Ever since the 63-page script containing the accusations the former director of the state-run oil interest Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), Emilio Lozoya Austin, made against a numerous set of former public officials, a small war of leaks has been taking place in Mexican politics. First Lozoya directly accused former Mexican Presidents Felipe Calderón, Enrique
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Back to School the Broadcast Way Thirty million Mexican public education students will return to classes on Monday, Aug. 24. The one difference in their education will be that they will stay at home and “attend school” through television broadcasts. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and Public Education Secretary (SEP) Esteban Moctezuma announced the new
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Gradual Business Reopenings Begin Ever so trepidly and not without fear that it might not be the right move to make, Mexico City and 16 Mexican states will begin gradual reopening for business as of Monday, June 16, after a harrowing 90-day lockdown that began on March 15. City and state authorities have warned that if there
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By RICARDO CASTILLO ,,, A quick review of the most important news in Mexico over the last few days…
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By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS Uncontrolled fires in Mexico City and the rest of the Valley of Mexico continued to contaminate the capital’s air quality throughout the weekend and into Monday, May 13, as government officials sought to contain the flames and investigate the source of the blazes. As of Monday morning, there had been at least nine new fires reported in
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By EARL ANTHONY WAYNE Former U.S. ambassador to Mexico and public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, D.C. (On Jan. 25, Ambassador Wayne offered a conference on bilateral cooperation in the fields of education, innovation and workforce development at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute’s Innovative Forum. This is a transcript of that presentation.) During my years as
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Baseball aficionado President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was pitched two unrelated labor strikes in a row on the week of Jan. 21. One was in the state of Michoacán concerning teachers, and the other was in the border city of Matamoros launched by maquiladora (in-bond assembly) industry workers. Both strikes were swerving curves that smoked right past batting
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By RICARDO CASTILLO A major theme among candidates in the ongoing Mexican presidential electoral campaign is the huge political squabble over education. And it seems only natural that education be the top topic of discussion since today Mexico celebrates the 100th anniversary of the declaration of Teachers’ Day or “Día del Maestro.” It was conceived during the drafting of the historic 1917
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