101 replies to this topic

[Yuli Ban]

The Brewing Mexico-China Romance Set To Stir Tensions With The US

In the crook of Mexico’s elbow lies the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the country’s skinniest strip of land where the Atlantic and Pacific are just 200 kilometers apart. Winds from the west power electricity-generating turbines, the lush soil supports lemon, mango and other crops, and it is the heart of a vibrant indigenous Zapotec culture. The brightly colored embroidered blouses and skirts, immortalized by Frida Kahlo, are still daily attire.
But it is also home to some of Mexico’s poorest communities. A powerful earthquake in 2017 caused devastation only four years after a hurricane pummeled the isthmus simultaneously from both shores. Now, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the front-runner in Mexico’s July 1 election, has his sights set on the gateway to Mexico’s deep south. He wants to revitalize a rail corridor across the isthmus that could act as a Panama Canal Lite, opening up a shortcut to the Atlantic.
The plan is by no means new: talk of reactivating a trade corridor here has swirled for decades. But Gerardo Esquivel, a Harvard-trained economist and development expert who is one of López Obrador’s economic advisers, sees China as a natural fit to make it happen. China is investing in “new Silk Road” trade corridors spanning 65 countries under its Belt and Road Initiative, as well as increasing investment in Latin America beyond its traditional focus on raw materials.

[Yuli Ban]

[Sciencerocks]

Great to see some real leftist taking over...

 

I hope they tariff the shit out of the United states

[Yuli Ban]

Opinion | Why Mexico Is Swinging Left

In this arid farming town in central Mexico, a crowd packed the plaza under a punishing sun to hear the leftist presidential hopeful Andrés Manuel López Obrador promise to end the corruption that plagues the nation.
“They have even said that corruption is part of Mexican culture,” he said to a chorus of supportive shouts. “That is a falsehood. A big lie. In our people, there is a great reserve of values, cultural, moral, spiritual, in the families, in the pueblos, in the communities.” He pointed upward. “The problem is above. The rulers always set a bad example.”
Mr. López Obrador went on to promise cuts in government expenditures, including a reduction in the president’s salary and the selling of the executive air fleet. He said he would redirect money to the poor through pensions, scholarships, apprenticeships and free fertilizer for small farmers, a vow greeted with raucous cheers.
His message — that he will overturn what he calls “the mafia of power” and replace it with an austere bureaucracy that invests in communities — is proving appealing as the July 1 election nears. According to the Bloomberg Poll tracker, Mr. López Obrador has the support of over 50 percent of voters, twice that of his rival Ricardo Anaya, of the center-right National Action Party. If these numbers translate to votes, it will give Mr. López Obrador, 64, the most decisive victory in a Mexican presidential election since 1982.

[Yuli Ban]

Andrés Manuel López Obrador: The populist rabble-rouser on the brink of power in Mexico

Andrés Manuel López Obrador looks relaxed and happy as he laps up the applause in the final days of Mexico’s presidential election campaign.
The 64-year-old veteran leftist seemingly hurtling towards a landslide, sometimes even allows himself to sound a little smug.
At a rally last week in the commuter town of Coacalco just outside Mexico City Mr López Obrador, grew sentimental. 
“I am not going to let you down,” he said with the July 1 vote fast approaching and polls showing him 20 points ahead.
“Love is paid for with love, and I love you just as much as you love me, and a little bit more on top of that.”

[caltrek]

I just hope Obrador can deliver once he is in office.  It would be a shame if he turned out to be highly authoritarian or pursue economic polices that just made the situation worse.  

 

Trump will not cooperate, but then Trump doesn't want to cooperate with Mexico no matter who is in power there.  He is too busy being Putin's lap dog, scapegoating immigrants, starting trade wars, etc.

[tierbook]

From what I've heard there are around 15,000 people running for the various offices open this election. Out of those 15,000, about 130 have been killed which means that just under 1% of all people running for office have been killed this election.... that's just insane

 

https://www.telesurt...80625-0023.html

[caltrek]

^^^There is old truism about Mexico that goes something like "Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States."

 

The insanity to which you refer is covered by the "so far from God" clause. 

[Yuli Ban]

Why Are Mainstream Media Slandering Mexico's López Obrador?
Instead of recognizing neoliberalism’s failure, they attack the Mexican leader who has successfully indicted it

If Andrés Manuel López Obrador—who by all predictions will be the next president of Mexico after the July 1 elections—lived in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, the US mainstream press would have already canonized him as a hero of democracy. AMLO, as he is universally known, would be praised for leading a nationwide, nonviolent, decades-long movement on its way to defeating a corrupt ruling elite at the ballot box.
Instead, the US media continually slander López Obrador as a dangerous “populist demagogue” with a “messiah complex” who could turn Mexico into another Venezuela. Among others, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and The Atlantic have misrepresented him; so far The New York Times has published four op-ed pieces, and three were hostile, even the article by a purported supporter. The nastiest attack so far, a June 17 Washington Post editorial, said that López Obrador “bears more than a passing political resemblance to President Trump.” The Economist repeated the slur, putting AMLO’s picture on its latest cover next to the headline “Mexico’s answer to Donald Trump.”
The US media are implying that AMLO’s lifelong, nonviolent campaign for democracy is somehow more dangerous than the two candidates who oppose him, both of whom belong to the violent and corrupt political elite that has plunged Mexico into its worst crisis in a century. Mainstream commentators are afraid to say so, but they must privately hope that one of the two privileged-class candidates wins (which, given López Obrador’s overwhelming lead in all the polls, could only happen due to stupendous fraud).

More than just personal pique explains why the mainstream is smearing López Obrador. Mexico has for more than two decades faithfully followed the neoliberal orthodoxy about economic growth, vigorously advocated by the International Monetary Fund, the US Treasury Department, and Wall Street. Starting with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, Mexico has been one of neoliberalism’s most dutiful pupils in the Global South. And the result has been crushing failure: since 1996, a pathetic per capita economic growth rate below 1.5 percent, one of the worst in all of Latin America, and an exodus, starting in the mid-1990s, of nearly 4 million economic refugees northward to the United States that didn’t stop until the 2008 Great Recession. The chronic stagnation has further discredited the traditional elite and boosted López Obrador’s calls for another economic path. But instead of recognizing neoliberalism’s failure, The Wall Street Journal and The Economist attack the Mexican leader who has successfully indicted it.

[caltrek]

^^^Not so close to the United States.   At least, not anymore.

[Yuli Ban]

Mexico Is Suffering Its Bloodiest Year in Modern History. Here's Why

The cycle of bloodshed that has gripped Mexico in recent years is again reaching record peaks. On average, someone was killed in Mexico every 15 minutes during the month of May, putting the country on track to surpass last year’s grim milestone of 29,168 killings.
The extent of the violence, and other types of crime, have pushed the issue to the top of the political agenda ahead of national elections on July 1. Political killings have also shot up, with 130 politicians, including 48 candidates for office, murdered since the beginning of the electoral cycle in September, according to political consultancy Etellekt. What is behind the violence?

[Yuli Ban]

In Mexico, fake news creators up their game ahead of election

Ahead of Mexico’s presidential election on Sunday, Facebook pages criticizing the leftist frontrunner feature posts with thousands of “likes” and no other reactions or comments, suggesting automation, a report on Thursday from the Atlantic Council said.
Many “likes” on the pages attacking Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor mounting his third campaign for the presidency, came from Brazil, the Washington-based think tank said. One human “like” came from a user claiming to run a group of social media specialists for hire.
 
The flurry of social media manipulation as Mexicans prepare to vote highlights how the playbook for information warfare has evolved since the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
 
Even with plenty of advance warnings, new hiring and partnerships, the social networks are failing to thwart more advanced techniques - boding poorly for attempts to keep deliberate misinformation at bay in coming elections around the world.

[Yuli Ban]

The peso is rallying ahead of Mexico's presidential election

The Mexican peso rallied Thursday as the country gears up for its presidential election this weekend.
The peso was up 2.15% versus the dollar at 2 p.m. ET. 
Javier Guzman, the Banco de Mexico's deputy governor, said Thursday the new government will need to lay out its economic policies "as soon as the electoral process is concluded" and didn't rule out additional rate hikes, even after the central bank raised its main rate last week to the highest it's been since 2009.
 
The peso has slid nearly 9% since March, when leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gained a double-digit lead in the race. Three polls out last weekend showed Lopez Obrador ahead of his closest rival, Ricardo Anaya of the conservative National Action Party, by more than 20 percentage points.

[Yuli Ban]

Mexico's Elections May Gift Trump The Penultimate Death of NAFTA

On Sunday, Mexicans will head to the polls to vote in an election that is guaranteed to transform front-line Mexican politics. After several failed attempts at winning the Presidency, leftest/populist stalwart Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known affectionately as AMLO) looks to steamroll to victory on the 1st of July as even many of his opponents are tacitly admitting that AMLO is an effective shoe-in for the Presidency and that the most they can do is try to limit the numerical size of his victory.
Throughout the campaign, AMLO  filled town squares and football stadiums with supporters who have clung to his anti-corruption, anti-oligarchic, anti-Trump and anti-crime message more readily than in previous years. Where AMLO continues to be portrayed as a dangerous maverick by establishment parties and politicians with many likening him to a Mexican version of Venezuela’s revolutionary President Hugo Chavez, the comparisons seem to have backfired as the status-quo of neo-liberal Mexican leaders is being held increasingly responsible for the country’s crime epidemic, narco-gangster epidemic and a stagnating economy in which wealth is widely viewed to be distributed unevenly and unfairly.
While AMLO’s anticipated victory would have likely been assured even without the appearance of Donald Trump as President north of the infamous border, AMLO’s leftist populism serves as the perfect contrast to Donald Trump’s specifically anti-Mexico conservative populism.

[caltrek]

@Yuli, 

 

Excellent choice of articles.  Much food for thought.  

[Yuli Ban]

AI to help tackle fake news in Mexican election

An AI-powered search tool is being used to monitor fake news and polling station problems in Mexico's elections.
Krzana is being used by the Verificado 2018 initiative which was set up by Mexican media to challenge fake news.
The run-up to Mexico's election has been deadly with more than 130 people killed since campaigning began.
Fearing more violence, Verificado plans to use the tool to react quickly to propaganda on social media and violence aimed at voters.
 
The sharply contested election has been marked by widespread use of bots and trolls to spread fake stories on social media.
Krzana will be used during the weekend of voting, said Toby Abel, Krzana co-founder, to help media groups pick out and react quickly to bogus information.
The tool has been taught to scan and analyse text, video and stills on social media to spot items and messages that relate to candidates and the election.

[Yuli Ban]

Leftist Wins Mexico Presidency in Landslide With Mandate to Reshape Nation

Riding a wave of populist anger fueled by rampant corruption and violence, the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected president of Mexico on Sunday, in a landslide victory that upended the nation’s political establishment and handed him a sweeping mandate to reshape the country.

Mr. López Obrador’s win puts a leftist leader at the helm of Latin America’s second-largest economy for the first time in decades, a prospect that has filled millions of Mexicans with hope — and the nation’s elites with trepidation.
The outcome represents a clear rejection of the status quo in the nation, which for the last quarter century has been defined by a centrist vision and an embrace of globalization that many Mexicans feel has not served them.
The core promises of Mr. López Obrador’s campaign — to end corruption, reduce violence and address Mexico’s endemic poverty — were immensely popular with voters, but they come with questions he and his new government may struggle to answer.
How he will pay for his ambitious slate of social programs without overspending and harming the economy? How will he rid the government of bad actors when some of those same people were a part of his campaign? Can he make a dent in the unyielding violence of the drug war, which left Mexico with more homicides last year than any time in the last two decades?
And how will Mr. López Obrador, a firebrand with a tendency to dismiss his critics in the media and elsewhere, govern?

[Yuli Ban]

In Mexico's Elections, Women Are Running In Unprecedented Numbers

Along with picking a new president in this Sunday's election, Mexicans will also replace every member of Congress and will elect thousands of state representatives and hundreds of new mayors. In that array of candidates are more than 3,000 women, who are vying for elective office in unprecedented numbers. Some Mexicans are calling 2018 "el año de la mujer," the year of the woman.
In the race for the next mayor of Mexico City, five of the seven candidates are women. One of them, Claudia Sheinbaum, leads in the polls by as much as 20 points. She's running on the Morena or National Regeneration Movement ticket. The party's presidential hopeful Andrés Manuel López Obrador is favored to win, too.
Sheinbaum holds degrees in physics and energy science and recently served as a council member in one of Mexico City's largest neighborhoods.

[Yuli Ban]

DAMN

 

Obrador is winning by such a stupidly large amount, he literally has more votes than all the rest of the candidates combined. And let me remind you, this is in a flawed democracy/hybrid regime where he's part of the opposition. And not even the main opposition.

 

Not only that, but it looks like MORENA (Obrador's party) and its coalition now basically control 3/4 of the Chamber of Deputies.

 

He's basically winning in real life by how much Trump had to desperately claim he won.

 

 

Sino-Mexican alliance, here we come.

[caltrek]

Mexico's 'Bernie Sanders' Wins in a Huge Historic Landslide With Mandate to Reshape the Nation

 

https://www.commondr...-reshape-nation

 

Conclusion:

 

(Common Dreams) Journalist Gwynne Dyer, writing on Common Dreams Sunday:

 

"It will also annoy Washington greatly. López Obrador is promising that all 50 Mexican consulates in the United States will help to defend migrants caught up in the American legal system. "Trump and his advisers speak of the Mexicans the way Hitler and the Nazis referred to the Jews, just before undertaking the infamous persecution and the abominable extermination,” López Obrador wrote just after the Great Distractor’s election." It’s quite likely that within a year the US intelligence services will be tasked with the job of finding ways to bring him down.

 

 John Feffer writing on Common Dreams Friday wrote:

 

"AMLO is definitely the Bernie Sanders of Mexico. He was the mayor of a city, like Sanders, though Mexico City is quite a bit bigger than Burlington, Vermont. He governed in the same pragmatic way that Bernie did, often partnering with the business community. As Jon Lee Anderson writes in The New Yorker, AMLO “succeeded in creating a pension fund for elderly residents, expanding highways to ease congestion, and devising a public-private scheme, with the telecommunications magnate Carlos Slim, to restore the historic downtown.” The latter is reminiscent of Sanders’s deals to revive Burlington’s waterfront."

 

 The Guardian reported Sunday night:

 

Leading members of Latin America’s left voiced hope Amlo’s election might revive the region’s rapidly ebbing ‘pink tide’. “It will signal the return of progressive winds to Latin America!” Gleisi Hoffmann, the president of Brazil’s embattled Worker’s party, predicted. 

 

Brazil’s impeached former president Dilma Rousseff said an AMLO win would “not just be a victory for Mexico but for all of Latin America”. 

 

Argentina’s former president, Cristina Kirchner, tweeted: “Andrés Manuel López Obrador represents hope, not just for Mexico but for the entire region.”