Mexico drug traffickers corrupt politics

Los Angeles Times, 5/31/2009
There are few places in Mexico that better illustrate the way traffickers have corrupted the political system from its very foundation than Michoacan, the home state of President Felipe Calderon.
A relatively new and particularly violent group, La Familia Michoacana, is undermining the electoral system and day-to-day governance of this south-central state, pushing [...]

In Ohio, a Growing Market for the Mexican Drug Trade

New York Times, 5/30/2009
Alcohol and marijuana are still the recreational drugs of choice for most young people in the Columbus suburbs. But parents, school officials and health care workers have grown concerned over rising reports of prescription drug and heroin abuse.
Laura Leach, a drug counselor at Dublin Scioto High School, said she had only recently [...]

Editorial: Oil Nationalism

Editorial, Financial Times, 5/29/2009
Latin America is a study in contrast of how countries manage their oil. In Mexico and Venezuela, state and oil industry live in a symbiosis flaunted as resource nationalism – but their state oil companies are looking increasingly like wounded giants. Brazil’s Petrobras, managed with a more open attitude, now overshadows its [...]

Chrysler says Mexico plants idled indefinitely

Reuters, 5/29/2009
U.S. automaker Chrysler has suspended operations indefinitely at all five of its Mexican plants, including two car assembly factories, as the company tries to emerge from bankruptcy.
The shutdown began about two weeks ago and there are no plans yet for restarting, Manuel Duarte, Chrysler’s spokesman in Mexico, said on Friday. “We are still monitoring [...]

Mexico Reduces Daily Dollar Auctions to $50 Million

Bloomberg, 5/29/2009
Mexico cut its daily dollar auctions in half to $50 million from $100 million, citing “less exchange rate volatility” after the peso extended its rebound to a third month from a record low.
The peso has soared 18 percent from 15.5892 per dollar on March 9 as President Felipe Calderon’s decision to line up a [...]

Interview: Mexican pollster expects low turnout in July elections

China View, 5/29/2009
MEXICO CITY, May 29 (Xinhua) — Mexico’s mid-term elections may well see a historically low turnout of some 30 percent, a leading pollster told Xinhua in an interview on Friday.
Lund is predicting a turnout of some 30 percent, lower than the 41.67 percent in the mid-term elections in 2003, and less than half [...]

Mexico offers $380,000 reward in journalist murder

Associated Press, 5/28/2009
Mexico’s top prosecutor on Thursday offered a $380,000 reward for information in the kidnapping and murder of a newspaper reporter who was found beaten and dead in an irrigation canal in northern Mexico this week.
The Attorney General’s Office said it would pay 5 million pesos to anyone providing “true, useful, relevant and opportune” [...]

Mexico’s deep recession: Not made here

The Economist, 5/28/2009
AFTER suffering unprecedented drug-related violence and the swine-flu outbreak, Mexicans must feel they have already had a year’s worth of bad news. Yet on May 20th they were hit by another blow: the government said that the economy had shrunk by 5.9%, seasonally adjusted, in the first quarter of 2009, four times the [...]

Canada must stress trade relationship with U.S., not NAFTA: Report

Ottawa Citizen, 5/28/2009
Despite appearances, Canada is not facing a perfect storm of U.S. anti-trade forces, but it must stress the existing bilateral relationship, rather than NAFTA, to promote its interests with its largest trading partner, a report said Monday.
“Ottawa needs a new approach to discussing Canada—U.S. trade — one that avoids direct mention of NAFTA,” [...]

Study Reveals Changes Among Second-Generation Hispanics

New York Times, 5/28/2009
Jose, the No. 1 Hispanic name for newborns in the United States, has been declining in popularity for years, and here is one possible reason: The American-born children of parents who arrived in the vast immigrant tide from Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America since 1980 now constitute a majority [...]