Mexico & Central America News and Discussions

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Mexicans vote in election likely to see first woman president

2 June 2024, 05:50 BST



Mexicans are voting in an election which is almost certain to see the country's first female president elected.

Both the front runner, Claudia Sheinbaum, and her main rival, Xóchitl Gálvez, are far ahead in the polls of the only male candidate, Jorge Álvarez Máynez.

Voters will also elect all members of Mexico's Congress and governors in eight states, as well as the head of Mexico City's government.

The campaign has been overshadowed by violent attacks, which the government says have resulted in more than 20 local candidates being killed across Mexico, although private surveys put the total at 37.

Ms Sheinbaum, a 61-year-old scientist who served as mayor of Mexico City from 2018 to 2023, has the backing of the outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp4475gwny1o

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At least 261 people have died in El Salvador's prisons under anti-gang crackdown, rights group says

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/at ... r-BB1pLEsI

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Murillo Confirms Banishment of Priests from Nicaragua
August 8, 2024

Introduction:

(Mosaico CSI) Rosario Murillo Zambrana, spokesperson for the regime that she co-leads with her husband Daniel Ortega Saavedra, confirmed on Thursday, August 8, the banishment of seven other priests from Nicaragua, who were sent to Rome the day before and "have arrived safely."

In his usual call to official media, Murillo avoided revealing the identity of the clerics sent to the Holy See, but hinted that two other priests, of the 9 who were confined in the Interdiocesan Seminary of Our Lady of Fatima, in Managua, remain in the country, but it is unknown under what conditions.

Murillo combined the announcement of the priests ' departure with the expulsion of the Brazilian ambassador to Nicaragua, Breno de Souza Brasil Dias da Costa, who reportedly left the country on Thursday, August 8.

He also said that the expelled Nicaraguan ambassador to Brazil, Fulvia Patricia Castro Matus from Matagalpa, was “on her way” to Nicaragua and that she will immediately take over the Ministry of Family, Community, Cooperative and Associative Economy (MEFCCA), “once the appointment is formalized” by Ortega.

Murillo began her call to the pro-government media by saying that she is always “living in light, in life, in truth, always prioritizing peace, which is justice, because it is peace that allows us, through justice, to undertake routes, paths, every day, every day we say we undertake, or continue walking on routes, paths that are for security, that are for the common good, that are for prosperity for Nicaraguan families.”

Read more here: https://mosaicocsi.com/2024/08/08/muri ... rednotes/

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Guatemalan Women Fought for Democracy. Now They Have to Make It Work for Them.
by Laura Carlsen
September 15, 2024

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) Outside the window, a storm gathers over Lake Atitlan. Inside, more than 50 women activists, including Guatemalan indigenous land defenders, international feminist leaders and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, listen attentively. Mayan ancestral authorities are telling the deep story of how a recent popular uprising mobilized by indigenous organizations held on for 106 days, defying one of the world’s most corrupt and tyrannic elites who were attempting to override the election results.

The triumph of the Guatemalan people’s movement in defense of democracy is all the more extraordinary because it was led by Indigenous peoples, youth, women, workers, urban poor—those who’ve been ignored and oppressed for centuries by the neocolonialist powers they now defeated at the polls.

Luz Emilia Ulario, ancestral leader of Santa Lucía Utatlán, summed up the moment: “We grew up in this racist, discriminatory system. It hasn’t just been 106 days--it’s been more than 532 years that we’ve been resisting. Those 106 days are when we all rose up together, we all spoke out to say what we think. We shed our fear. It was really the culmination of the 532 years.”

Ulario is one of many women ancestral authorities and indigenous community leaders who traveled to the lakeside village of Panajachel to meet with the international delegation “Women for Peace and Democracy,” organized by the Nobel Women’s Initiative of Peace Prize laureates; JASS, an international feminist movement building organization that supports women’s organizing and movements; and the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation.

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/i ... uatemala


Guatemala

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Mexican Mayor Assassinated Days After Taking Office
October 7, 2024

Introduction:

(NBC) MEXICO CITY — The mayor of the capital of Mexico’s violence-plagued state of Guerrero was killed on Sunday less than a week after he took office, the state’s governor confirmed.

Alejandro Arcos was killed just six days after he took office as mayor of the city of Chilpancingo, a city of around 280,000 people in southwestern Mexico.

"His loss mourns the entire Guerrero society and fills us with indignation," Guerrero Governor Evelyn Salgado said in a statement shared on social media.

Guerrero's state attorney general's office also said it was investigating his murder.

The official confirmation came after photos circulated on messaging app WhatsApp depicting a severed head on top of a pick-up truck, appearing to be that of Arcos. Reuters could not independently verify the photos’ authenticity.

Read more here: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/mex ... na174224

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Taiwanese Tech Giant Foxconn Announces Construction in Mexico of World's Largest Plant to Manufacture 'Superchips' for Nvidia
by Erika Rosette
October 8, 2024

Introduction:

(El Pais) First, it was the vice president of Taiwanese company Hon Hai (Foxconn) —the largest assembler of electronic products in the world— who announced on Wednesday that “the largest production facility on the planet” for the GB200 superchips of the American company Nvidia was being built. He could not say exactly where, but a few minutes later, Foxconn president Young Liu assured reporters during the inauguration of Hon Hai Tech Day 2024, the Taiwanese firm’s annual technology conference, that this plant was being built in Mexico. The executives have not specified the location, but assured that the factory is underway.

This Asian company, whose official name is Hon Hai Precision Industry, is the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer and the main iPhone assembler on the planet. Nvidia, the American microprocessor company , does not manufacture its own chips, and instead uses subcontractors. In 2023, Foxconn announced its alliance with Nvidia to create "AI factories", spaces in which data is processed that will drive the creation of next-generation products; this Mexican branch is part of this plan.

Nvidia's GB200 chips, which will be manufactured in Mexico, although it is still not known specifically in which part of the country, are part of the Blackwell family, a new generation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) processors that has already placed the American company in a privileged position in the market. "The demand (for the Blackwell platform) is terribly huge," said Foxconn vice president Benjamin Ting. Blackwells are processing units specialized in performing calculation operations at high speeds, and specialized media have also classified them as part of the definition of "the next chapter in generative AI with unparalleled performance, efficiency and scale."

Nvidia’s stock market capitalization had taken a hit in August when a technology outlet reported that the launch of servers using GB200 chips would be delayed by three months or more due to unexpected design flaws. At Foxconn’s latest investor conference, company spokesman James Wu assured that there were no delays in shipments of these servers and that work with its US partner would continue as scheduled in the fourth quarter: “Hon Hai will definitely be the world’s first GB200 server supplier,” he said.

Read more here: https://elpais.com/mexico/2024-10-08/e ... idia.html

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Catholic Church Denounces Advance of Organized Crime in Chiapas
by Georgina Zerega
October 24, 2024

Introduction:

(El País) The Catholic Church has spoken out against the critical situation in Chiapas following the murder of Father Marcelo Pérez last Sunday . The murder of the priest, a well-known human rights activist, has shocked not only society, but the religious community, which has come out in force to give its support and to ask the authorities to guarantee peace. Several dioceses in Mexico, and even some members of the international community, have come out to pressure the governments at all three levels—federal, state and local—to fight against the advance of organized crime. “Enough violence! We want justice! We want peace! May the blood of Father Marcelo not have been shed in vain,” has asked the diocese of Tehuacán, which includes five bishops and an archbishop from Puebla, Tlaxcala and Guanajuato.

The requests of the religious community were headed by the diocese of San Cristóbal, which requested in a statement the “urgent disarmament, dismantling and immediate dismantling of the criminal groups that rule the state and their national and international allied networks, interested in the plunder and territorial control.” Chiapas has been under the yoke of organized crime for months . In some towns in the southern state, members of the different drug cartels clash daily. Local mafias and self-defense groups also operate in an area where, along the border with Guatemala, multiple illegal activities take place, such as drug trafficking or human trafficking.

Pérez, who was shot in his car as he left mass in San Cristóbal de las Casas, had reported receiving threats before being killed. For at least a decade he worked between Simojovel, in the Los Altos region, and Pantelhó, where he had tried to mediate in the local conflict over the territory. “All this service he performed led him to suffer a long period of threats, persecution, harassment, slander, defamation,” the diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas wrote about the priest. The statement says that they had already denounced in 2020 an “increase in social decomposition” due to the “presence of criminal groups and the permissiveness of the authorities.”

Read more here: https://elpais.com/mexico/2024-10-24/l ... -paz.html

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Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s New President, is Reshaping its Energy Industry.
by Umair Irfan
October 29, 2024

Introduction:

(Vox) Earlier this month, Mexico inaugurated Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo as its first woman president after she won a commanding election victory with close to 60 percent of the vote.

Sheinbaum, 62, is a climate scientist by training, though she’s held public office for more than a decade, including a stint as mayor of Mexico City. Politically, she’s closely aligned with her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and in her inaugural address, she promised to carry forward much of his populist agenda by expanding social welfare programs, maintaining price controls on fuels, and building at least a million new homes.

But she also broke with López Obrador in important ways, emphasizing a stronger commitment to mitigating climate change and pledging to transition Mexico’s energy sector toward cleaner energy.

“She didn’t win the election on a climate platform; she won the election promising continuity with [López Obrador’s] policies, which weren’t necessarily climate friendly,” said Oscar Ocampo, an energy researcher at the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO). “However, she cares deeply about accelerating the energy transition, about reducing Mexico’s greenhouse gas emissions.”

The new president has been clear about her agenda: Sheinbaum has promised to keep some of López Obrador’s policies in place, and in her inaugural address she said private electricity generation will remain capped at 46 percent. “All of us need strong public energy companies that guarantee clean energy at low prices for current and future generations,” she said.

Read more here: https://www.vox.com/climate/380123/mex ... ate-pemex

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Note however:
https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country ... lorida-usa

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More on that by the AP:

https://apnews.com/article/el-salvador- ... 31806d2fc0

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8 of 11 Supreme Court Justices in Mexico Just Resigned
by Rob Quinn
October 31, 2024

Introduction:

(Newser) Mexico's 11-member Supreme Court will be reduced to nine justices under a constitutional overhaul enacted last month, but winnowing the current court down won't be a problem: Eight justices submitted their resignations this week, including Norma Pina, the court's president, reports Reuters. Under the overhaul, all federal judges will have to be elected. The eight Supreme Court justices, whose resignations will mostly take effect next year, said they won't take part in an election for the top court scheduled in June, AFP reports.

Resigning before the election allows the judges to keep their pensions. "If they do not resign now, they will no longer have their retirement benefits," said President Claudia Sheinbaum, whose predecessor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, proposed the reforms. The resignations came as the country's lower house approved a constitutional amendment that blocks the Supreme Court and other courts from suspending changes to the constitution, including the judicial overhaul, Bloomberg reports. The amendment will now be voted on by state legislatures, which are expected to pass it. The court had planned to review the overhaul next week.

The resignations add to tensions between the government and the country's top court, CNN reports. Opposition lawmakers and countries including the US have expressed worries about the overhaul, saying it could erode the separation of powers and threaten democracy, reports Bloomberg. In his resignation letter, one of the eight judges, Justice Alfredo Gutierrez, said, "It is necessary to underscore that this resignation does not imply an implicit acceptance of the reform's constitutionality."

Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/8 ... 8d&ei=48

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Holy shit constitutional crisis

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'See You Soon': Sheinbaum Shares Details of Her Call with Trump
by Zedryk Raziel
November 8, 2024

Introduction:

(El País) See you soon. We'll see each other soon. It's an expression that the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, remembers from her phone call on Thursday with Donald Trump , the next president of the United States. The president has reiterated that the conversation was cordial and that she predicts good times for the bilateral relationship, despite the threats that the Republican has proclaimed against Mexico once he takes office. “It was a very cordial call, I want to emphasize this. He began the conversation by congratulating me on the victory in the elections [in June], so I returned the congratulations, obviously, that's what the call was for, to congratulate him on the victory,” Sheinbaum said in her morning press conference.

The president has said that Trump “raised the issue of the border,” without giving further details on the matter. “He just said it, and I told him: 'Yes, there is the issue of the border, but there will be room to discuss it,'” Sheinbaum shared. The Republican has announced that he will impose a 25% tariff on Mexican imports as a method of pressure for his trading partner to take drastic measures against immigration and drug trafficking.
Sheinbaum said that Trump, who is becoming president of the United States for the second time, invited her to the inauguration ceremony. “This thing that came out [in the media] that he invited me to the inauguration and all this, he told me: 'See you soon' , that is, 'see you soon'; I told him: Yes, see you soon,” she shared. The president has left open the possibility of attending the ceremonial event, which confirms the priority of her mandate in terms of foreign policy , in contrast to former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was very localist.

The president added that the Republican politician sent his regards to López Obrador, who has retired from politics after Sheinbaum's victory. "He took the opportunity to ask me to send his regards to President López Obrador, with whom he said he had had a very good relationship," she said. The former president used to highlight that, during his first term (2016-2020), the Republican had been very respectful of Mexico. In fact, López Obrador referred to Trump as a "friend." Sheinbaum is confident that she will reap some of the fruits of the relationship cultivated by her predecessor. "It was a very, very cordial call, the truth is, and we are happy about it, and now everything that comes next," she indicated.

Read more here: https://elpais.com/mexico/2024-11-08/s ... e-uu.html

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Nicaragua: Alarming Erosion of Freedom and Academic Autonomy
November 8, 2024

Introduction:

(UN News) In a new report released on Friday, the three-person group of experts – who are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council – found authorities have used physical and psychological violence, including threats of intimidation, beatings and prolonged solitary confinement against both students and faculty.

Some of these cases could amount to torture and largely involve students and professors who participated in widespread anti-Government protests in 2018 or those who have publicly criticised the Government of President Daniel Ortega.

Universities in Nicaragua have long played a historic role as spaces for social change and resistance, dating back to the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, the experts note.

Consequently, “the Nicaraguan Government has directly targeted universities as part of a widespread repressive campaign, eliminating their autonomy and turning them into centres of political control,” said Jan Simon, who chairs the group, none of whom receive payment for their work and who are not UN staff.

Closures, expulsions

Between 2021 and 2024, at least 37 universities and higher education institutions – most of which are known for supporting social movements – have had their legal status revoked under administrative sanctions.

Read more here: https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/11/1156741