By RICARDO CASTILLO “Iron Lady” Named Tax Collector Raquel Buenrostro Sánchez was appointed as Mexico’s new Tributary Administration Service (SAT) director on Thursday, Dec. 18, by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). She replaces Margarita Ríos-Farjat, now the 11th member of the Supreme Court of the Nation. Buenrostro (whose last name literally means Good Face) was promoted to the
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Let’s not misinterpret facts: For Mexicans, the man who will be on trial in the United States for providing legal protection to the Sinaloa Drug Cartel will not be former Mexican Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna, but rather his boss, the man who appointed him and protected him in that post from 2006 to 2012, former
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By RICARDO CASTILLO García Luna Refuses Mexico’s Help Shackled and wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, Mexico’s former top cop Genaro García Luna appeared before Judge David Horan of the Dallas Federal Court on Tuesday, Dec. 17. García Luna, who was the public security secretary under former Mexican President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), declined during his brief 10-minute court appearance his right
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By RICARDO CASTILLO There’s an old practice in Mexican political journalism known as “tying knives” (“amarrando navajas,” if you want the Spanish term.) The term is not political in origin. In fact, it actually refers to the moment before a cockfight when the people in charge of making the birds fight tie a steel blade to the roosters’ spurs. Consequently,
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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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By RICARDO CASTILLO Snafu over Gay Zapata Painting Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata was murdered 100 years ago, on April 10, 1919. Over the last century, he became a Mexican Revolution icon, a magic figure with a holy aura. But all hell broke loose this week at Mexico’s Palacio de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Palace) when, in an exhibit to
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Questions galore arose in Mexico regarding the arrest on Tuesday, Dec. 10, of the country’s former public security secretary from 2006 to 2012, Genaro García Luna, who served under President Felipe Calderón. Garcia Luna also was the Federal Investigations Agency (AFI) chief from 2001 to 2005, under President Vicente Fox. García Luna was arrested in Grapevine, Texas,
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Last May 1, which happened to be International Labor Day, Mexico’s Labor Secretary Luisa María Ugalde announced the new labor reform which became law upon being published in the Official Gazette of the Federation. “(This law is) historic because it looks after a pending debt in the nation, because democracy and freedom had not arrived in the
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By RICARDO CASTILLO AMLO-Trump: The Art of the Deal The smoke screen left behind on Thursday, Dec 5, by the noisy visit of U.S. Attorney General William Barr cleared rapidly over the next three days as U.S. President Donald Trump and his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) practiced both the art of the deal and quid pro quo
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By RICARDO CASTILLO New Supreme Court Judge The Mexican Senate elected Ana Margarita Ríos-Farjat as a new member of the country’s Supreme Court (SCJN). Up until now, lawyer Ríos-Farjat had been working as head of the nation’s Tributary Administrative System (SAT), the Treasury Secretariat unit that oversees the nation’s tax collection. Ríos-Farjat received 94 votes from the senators (a minimum
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