By RICARDO CASTILLO Debt Restructuring Plan The Mexican Treasury and the National Banking and Stocks Commission (CNBV) launched a national debt relief package to help borrowers and banks alike during the covid-19 pandemic-provoked economic crisis. The plan includes a downsizing of the agreed-upon interest rate and reduces the monthly amount borrowers are currently paying. All news arrangement will have to
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By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS The political clock is ticking, and Mexico now has just weeks to make more than a year’s worth of water payments to the United States in compliance with a 1944 bilateral treaty. But while Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has repeated said in his morning press conferences that the country will meet the Oct. 24
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Chihuahua Governor Seeks Martyrdom In the past two weeks, National Action Party (PAN) Chihuahua Governor Javier Corral has staged two major publicity stunts: First he led a group of 10 state governors to splinter from the National Governors’ Conference (Conago), and then, Immediately afterwards, he permitted a group of farmers to take the federally managed and National
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Wet Politicking in Dry Chihuahua There was a faceoff this week between farmers and the National Guard (GN) at the La Boquilla reservoir on the Conchos River, which feeds into the Rio Grande at the Ojinaga-Presidio border. The GN, in charge of safekeeping the dam, had to withdraw from the facility on Tuesday, Sept. 8, to avoid
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By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS Along the Rio Grande River in Texas, the covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic slowdown are major concerns, but not nearly as worrying for local farmers as the impending water crisis. The Rio Grande farmers produce nearly $500 million in foodstuffs each year, making the Rio Grande Valley (technically, it is not a valley, but a sprawling
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Feeling Out Water Shortages in Mexico
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By RICARDO CASTILLO In tandem with the announcement on Monday, April 29, of the additional construction of the Santa Lucía military airport — now renamed the Felipe Ángeles Airport — just northwest of the Teotihuacán Pyramids, Communications and Transportation Secretary Javier Jiménez Espriú surreptitiously released to the handpicked newspaper El Universal as well as to journalist Jorge Zepeda, copies of
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