By RICARDO CASTILLO Mexico’s state-owned energy companies Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) continue to be leading problems for the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). Both are separate entities that must be dealt with separately. So we’ll start with a look at Pemex, and then consider th CFE a few paragraphs down. Pemex and
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By RICARDO CASTILLO On Monday, July 15, U.S. President Donald Trump announced the implementation of a new rule which would deny immigrants who arrive through Mexican territory seeking asylum access through the southern border. Under the new regulation, all Central American asylum seekers on the way to the United States would be required to first pursue safe haven in a
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Was there or was there not corruption involved in the construction of the now-defunct New International Mexico Airport (NAIM)? Just Monday, July 15, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) said there was corruption in many of the already-awarded construction contracts, while Communications and Transportation Secretary (SCT) Javier Jiménez Espriú stated that corruption was not an issue
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By RICARDO CASTILLO On Monday, July 8, the Baja California state assembly approved by a majority vote a bill to extend the governance period of newly elected Governor Jaime Bonilla Valdez from two to five years. Bonilla Valdez was elected last June 2 to govern for two years. Normally, Baja governors are elected to govern for six years. Elections
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Definitely the outstanding image in Mexico for the week July 8-12 was the stone-cold face of Arturo Herrera Gutiérrez as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador appointed him the government’s new finance secretary. Herrera Gutiérrez looked as if he was attending his own funeral. The fact is that a lot of political pundits noticed the grave gesture, that
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By RICARDO CASTILLO A case that is currently making ripples in the turbulent waters of Mexican politics today began when the well-known lawyer Juan Collado Mocelo was arrested on Tuesday, July 9, at high-end Mexico City eatery Morton’s Steak House in Lomas de Chapultepec. At the moment of his arrest, Collado Mocelo was eating with one of his clients, Pemex
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By RICARDO CASTILLO It was a political rock rattle and roll in the Mexican government Tuesday, July 9, when, over the course of just one hour one Treasury Secretary resigned and a new one was appointed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). To offer a proper sequence of events, allow me to start from the beginning of the series
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By RICARDO CASTILLO What came as a shock to the Mexican political system last Friday, July 5, was not that the nation’s fiscal (attorney) general managed to get a judge to issue him yet another arrest warrant against former Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) Director Emilio Lozoya Austin, but that the arrest warrant also included his mother, wife and sister, Gilda Austin,
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The birthing pangs of Mexico’s new National Guard (GN) are being heard loud and clear across the country. But they do not come from within the newly created police deployed on the streets as of Sunday, June 30. The are from the nation’s Federal Police agents, who fear the changes that the GN represent. With the National
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The tip of the iceberg appeared last April in the form of three outages in the Yucatan Peninsula, each affecting approximately 1.6 million electricity users. Back then, the Mexican state-owned company Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) blamed the blackouts on rural cane field fires and line failures. The rest of the iceberg emerged last month, and the truth
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