Headlines from Mexico

On September 21, 2018September 21, 2018 By mexicoinstituteIn Headlines from MexicoLeave a comment

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1. The Instituto Jalisciense de Ciencias Forenses, Jalisco’s Institute of Forensic Sciences, abandoned a semi-trailer truck with approximately 250 bodies of victims of drug-related crimes on the outskirts of Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city. Civil society groups and relatives of missing individuals protested in the state’s capital and demanded better protocols to handle non-identified bodies.

2. In a public ceremony at Mexico City’s Zocalo this Wednesday, President Enrique Peña Nieto remembered the victims of last year’s earthquake. It was the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake that killed 230 people in the capital alone and the 33^rd anniversary of the 1985 earthquake, which killed thousands of people in the city.

Read more: El Economista, Milenio, Expansion

3. President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador said during a tour in Tepic, Nayarit that perhaps it would be impossible to accomplish all of the promises made during the campaign, as he is inheriting a country “in a situation of bankruptcy.” The current government and business leaders deny that the country is in bankruptcy and say the economy is stable.

4. The nominee to become Mexico’s next Secretary of the Interior, Olga Sanchez Cordero, has said that President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador will not accept $20 million in U.S. aid to remove Central American migrants and that Mexico will not police on behalf of the United States.

5. Mexico’s private sector insisted that Texcoco is the only viable option to build the New International Airport of the Mexico City (NAICM) due to “the available financing mechanisms, its sustainability, and its long-term vision,” and recommended the next government continue with the project as planned.

Read more: La Jornada, El Financiero, Milenio

6. Mexico’s Federal Electoral Court ordered a total vote recount in the 26 electoral districts of the state of Puebla. Martha Erika Alonso Hidalgo celebrated the decision, and Miguel Barbosa believes that the vote recount will expose the manipulation of the gubernatorial election.

Read more: Forbes, El Economista, Excelsior, Reforma

State of Emergency in Mexico’s Sinaloa as 3 Dead in Flooding

On September 21, 2018 By mexicoinstituteIn Environment, Government, Media and SocietyLeave a comment

09/21/2018 – The New York Times

Mexican authorities have declared a state of emergency for 11 municipalities in the northern state of Sinaloa due to flooding from heavy rains that has killed at least three people.

Images in local and social media have shown streets turned into raging rivers, swamping cars. El Universal newspaper posted video of an SUV being carried away by the current in Guamuchil as passengers scrambled to get onto its roof.

Soldiers went around in trucks to pick up residents and take them to safety. The Sinaloa state government said Thursday night that more than 2,000 people had evacuated and 13 shelters were set up.

Freeland returns to Canada empty-handed

On September 21, 2018 By mexicoinstituteIn NAFTA, North America, tradeLeave a comment

09/21/2018 – Politico

25978788484_bc287b34ac_k Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland returned to Canada on Thursday night without a NAFTA 2.0 breakthrough to announce as negotiators from the U.S. and Canada remain under pressure to reach a deal this month.

Freeland opted not to use the word “progress” when discussing the status of the negotiations on Thursday afternoon. Asked why she has not used the word recently, she said: “I chose my words carefully. Today we discussed some tough issues. The conversation was constructive.”

But even if the U.S. and Canada reach a deal, negotiators from the U.S., Mexico and Canada still need to meet to put together the technical texts for a trilateral deal, Mexico’s chief NAFTA negotiator, Kenneth Smith Ramos, said Thursday.

UPDATE 1-Mexico’s Pemex reaches deal to see if Talos find reaches its block

On September 21, 2018 By mexicoinstituteIn Business and Competitiveness, Economic Growth, Energy and Natural Resources, EnvironmentLeave a comment

9/21/2018 – Reuters

MEXICO CITY, Sept 20 (Reuters) – Mexican state oil firm Pemex has reached a preliminary agreement with a consortium led by Talos Energy to evaluate whether the group’s find in the Gulf of Mexico extends into a neighboring Pemex block, the companies said in a statement on Thursday.

The deal, which covers territory in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico, is the first of its kind for Pemex and will be in force for two years.

The Talos consortium, which includes Britain’s Premier Oil and Mexico’s Sierra Oil & Gas, won development rights for two blocks during the first oil auction launched by President Enrique Pena Nieto. Held in 2015, the auction marked the end of Pemex’s decades-long monopoly.

Envoy: US, Canada working 24/7 on revamped NAFTA deal

On September 21, 2018 By mexicoinstituteIn Economic Integration, NAFTA, trade, UncategorizedLeave a comment

9/20/2018 – Washington Post

Canadian Foreign Minister†Chrystia Freeland†Testifies To Lawmakers On NAFTA — Photographer: David Kawai/Bloomberg

WASHINGTON — U.S. and Canadian negotiators are working around the clock on a deal to keep Canada in a North American trade bloc ahead of a Sept. 30 U.S. deadline.

“Our officials are in pretty much constant contact,” Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland told reporters after meetings Thursday with her counterpart, U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer. “It would not be an exaggeration to say they are working 24/7.”

Freeland is returning to Canada for a summit of women foreign ministers Friday but said she and Lighthizer remain in close contact by phone and email.

Canada was left out when the United States and Mexico reached an agreement last month to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement. Freeland is trying to get the No. 2 U.S. trade partner reinstated.

Mexico’s President-Elect Stuck Aboard Delayed Flight

On September 21, 2018 By mexicoinstituteIn 2018 elections, Government, Mexican CultureLeave a comment

New York Times – 9/21/2018

Mexican Presidential Candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador Interview — (Photo: Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s austerity-minded president-elect has vowed to sell the presidential jet and fly commercial. And he even appears prepared to suffer the plight of average travelers: being trapped on delayed flights.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was stuck for at least three hours after his flight from the Huatulco airport in southern Mexico was delayed by air traffic and weather.

Passengers posted videos Thursday of Lopez Obrador speaking from his seat on the plane bound for Mexico City.

Lopez Obrador says the experience won’t make him change his mind.

He said, “I am not going to get on the presidential airplane. I would be ashamed … to have a luxury airplane in a country with so much poverty.”

Mexican Officials Say 273 Corpses Were on Wandering Truck

On September 21, 2018 By mexicoinstituteIn Crime & Violence, Drug War, Government, human rightsLeave a comment

New York Times – 9/20/2018

MEXICO CITY — A wandering refrigerated truck carrying corpses from an overflowing morgue in Mexico actually contained 273 bodies, not 157 as originally stated.

Officials described late Wednesday how the truck was forced to move around the outskirts of the western city of Guadalajara as neighbors and officials objected to its grisly cargo, and the smell.

A total of 444 bodies had piled up at the state morgue, as Mexico suffered a 17 percent surge in homicides so far this year. Forty-nine of those bodies remained in the morgue, 273 were crammed onto the truck and 122 were kept in a second refrigerated trailer in the morgue parking lot.

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