EVENT: Launch of The State of the Border Report

Thursday, May 23, 2013 / 3:30 – 5:30 pm / Wilson Center

Details & RSVP: http://bit.ly/StateofBorder

In conjunction with the North American Center for Transborder Studies and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, The Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute is pleased to invite you to the launch of The State of the Border Report.

The report provides a comprehensive look at the state of affairs in the management of the U.S.-Mexico border and the border region, focusing on four core areas: trade and competitiveness, security, sustainability, and quality of life.

Mexico says U.S. economy a worry for growth

Vidgaray

Reuters, 5/22/2013

Mixed signals from the U.S. economy are clouding the growth outlook for Mexico and it needs to be ready for the shocks that could accompany a possible withdrawal of U.S. monetary stimulus, Finance Minister Luis Videgaray said on Wednesday. Mexico’s government last week cut its growth outlook for 2013 to 3.1 percent from 3.5 percent after a soft first quarter, and Videgaray said Latin America’s No. 2 economy has been hurt by weaker U.S. demand for its exports.

“Without a doubt the most important thing is the weakness in the growth of the United States … which still shows mixed signals,” Videgaray told the Reuters Latin America Investment Summit in Mexico City. “We have good data in the United States and the next day we have discouraging data.”

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Exclusive: Mexico says mine industry investment could rise a bit through 2018

Reuters, 5/22/2013

Mexico sees total mining investment between 2013-2018 of at least $25 billion, holding steady or rising slightly from the previous six years despite the prospect of less favorable metals prices, Mexico’s top government mining official told Reuters on Wednesday. “We estimate total investment for the (president’s) six year term could be above or around $25 billion or $26 billion,” Mario Cantu Suarez, Mexico’s chief mining official, told Reuters at the BNAmericas Mexico mining summit.

Over the six-year term of former president Felipe Calderon, when metals prices saw an unprecedented boom thanks to top commodity buyer China, total investment reached $25 billion, with foreign companies accounting for 40 percent. Driven by Chinese demand, commodity prices soared in recent years, and Mexico’s mining income grew 134 percent between 2009-2011. Mining is now Mexico’s fourth largest industry in dollar income, behind automobiles, oil and electronics, according to official data.

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Leaders of Latin America’s 4-nation Pacific Alliance trade bloc meet to discuss final form

Associated Press, 5/22/2013

The presidents of Colombia, Peru, Chile and Mexico meet in the western city of Cali on Thursday in hopes of completing a nascent trade bloc that looks to the European Union as a model and aims to further open their trade with Asia. The leaders of Canada, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Spain, all interested in eventually joining the bloc, are due to attend as observers. Costa Rica was signing a free trade agreement with Colombia on Wednesday.

The Pacific Alliance was formally inaugurated last June. All its members but Colombia already belong to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Asia-Pacific-wide trading bloc that includes Canada and the United States. In a televised speech Tuesday night, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, an economist and former foreign trade minister, called the alliance essential to “the most important process of integration in the history of Latin America.”

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Boxes of Cash Seized in Mexico Corruption Probe

Associated Press, 5/23/2013

Mexican authorities on Wednesday seized five boxes filled with cash as part of an investigation into alleged embezzlement by a former governor of southern Tabasco state, in what could become the latest test for President Enrique Pena Nieto to act against corruption. Tabasco state prosecutor Fernando Valenzuela said bundles of 500- and 1,000-peso bills were found in an office of Jose Saiz, who was finance secretary under former Gov. Andres Granier of Pena Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI.

Investigators are still counting the money, but a witness told them the cache contains from 90 million to 100 million pesos, Valenzuela said. That would between $7 million and $8 million. Current Gov. Arturo Nunez, of the opposition Democratic Revolution Party, has repeatedly accused his predecessor of having left a public debt of millions of dollars and of representing Mexico’s corrupt, old-style politics.

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Mexico’s Pemex to add 30,000 bpd capacity to top refinery

Reuters, 5/22/2013

State oil monopoly Pemex will boost capacity at its biggest refinery, Salinas Cruz, by 9 percent in a $4 billion expansion, its head of refining said, part of Mexico’s aim to wean itself off supplies of refined production from the United States. The Mexican government will seek a major overhaul of the domestic industry later this year, and Pemex is under pressure to boost output and efficiency in the country’s lumbering energy sector.

Miguel Tame, Director General of Pemex’s PEMX.UL refining arm, told the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit that the company was about to begin the overhaul at Salinas Cruz, which would increase production by 30,000 barrels per day (bpd) when completed in 3-4 years. “That is where I have space, where I have storage tanks and pipelines to bring as much crude as possible,” Tame said in an interview. “I can still boost daily processing at Salinas Cruz by 30,000 barrels if I undertake the reconfiguration.”

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Entrenched Mexico drug mafia, vigilantes battle for control of agricultural Michoacan state

Associated Press, 5/22/2013

Help finally arrived Sunday when thousands of soldiers rolled in to restore order. The government of President Enrique Pena Nieto says troops will stay in Michoacan until every citizen lives in peace. But the offensive, headed by Secretary of Defense Salvador Cienfuegos, looks a lot like failed operations launched previously by former President Felipe Calderon, who started his first assault on organized crime in Michoacan shortly after taking office in late 2006.

Calderon was trying to stop drug cartels from morphing into mafias controlling all segments of society. But that’s exactly what has happened, as they maintain country roads, control the local economy and mete out justice for common crimes. In the Tierra Caliente, a remote agricultural region, fire has been a favored weapon of the cartel. On the highway between Coalcoman and La Ruana, the ruins of three sawmills torched by the cartel still smoldered this week.

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Immigration reform, while flawed, moves forward in Senate

The Washington Post, 5/22/2013

The most far-reaching overhaul of the nation’s immigration system in a generation has emerged mostly unscathed from the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill’s bipartisan sponsors showed that, even in Washington, the center can sometimes hold. Though the legislation, all 800-odd pages of it, contains provisions that pained Democrat and Republican backers alike, they gritted their teeth and voted it out of committee and onto the Senate floor.

The bill’s prospects remain cloudy, particularly in the Republican-dominated House. Still, it remains the best hope for legalization and eventual citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants since the last major attempt at immigration reform failed in 2007.

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