Mexico

President Felipe Calderon participated in Earth Day ceremonies on an ecological reserve, calling for greater environmental education in the country’s schools. Arguing that educational programs will improve the environment and combat global warming, Calderon also signed a decree aimed at protecting the endangered “El Hundido” aquifer in Coahuila state.

Calderon has developed an environmental initiative called PROARBOL, which seeks to plant 250 million trees, slow or prevent deforestation, and give protected status to 3 million additional hectares of land.

Source: Calderon urges more education (The Herald - El Universal)

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg traveled to Toluca, Mexico this week to learn about the Oportunidades anti-poverty program.  Serving approximately 25 million people, Opportunidades is Mexico’s conditional cash transfer program and principal anti-poverty initiative. The program awards cash grants to economically disadvantaged families for keeping their children in school and providing them with healthcare.  The focus on breaking the cycle of poverty by taking a long-term approach has gained praise from the World Bank and several countries that have looked to it as a model. Now, New York City is doing the same.

Mayor Bloomberg’s Center for Economic Opportunity has introduced Opportunity NYC, a conditional cash transfer program that will be the first of its kind in the U.S. It is based on similar programs throughout the world, including Mexico’s. As a pilot program, Opportunity NYC will begin with 2,500 families and could be scaled up from there, depending on the results.

In Mexico, the Oportunidades program is credited with decreasing the percentage of Mexicans living in extreme poverty by 17% since 1996. Strides have also been made in education and healthcare, with measureable improvements in nutrition, preventive healthcare access, prenatal health visits, school-readiness skills, and decreases in drop-out and failure rates among participating children, among other indicators.

According to Mayor Bloomberg, “The bottom line about Mexico’s conditional cash transfer program is that it works, and during this trip we want to study the details of what they’re doing right, so our program in New York can also succeed.” (See press release.)

The Mayor’s delegation included city representatives along with Dr. Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, a participant in the Opportunity NYC program. Delegates saw the Oportunidades program in action in Toluca and also visited Mexico City to meet Mayor Marcelo Ebrard and President Felipe Calderon.

Contributed by Rich Basas of FPA’s Migration Blog: 

W-FIVE, A well known Canadian Investigative journalism program recently aired a report concerning the deaths of Dominic and Nancy Iannero, a Canadian couple who were murdered in their resort hotel room last year. The couple was in Mexico to celebrate the wedding of their son, but had their throats slashed by a still unknown attacker/s.

While W-FIVE suggests a hotel employee as being the best suspect and Canada’s most famous criminal lawyer assisting the Iannero family in their cause, the local Mexican investigators have all but closed the investigation. The impression in Mexico is that the suspects are likely Canadians, disregarding the Iannero’s evidence as an attempt to discredit local authorities and embarrass the local tourist industry.

The report goes on to outline their reasons why to this date no one has been charged formally for the crime. Many in Canada believe that the local Mexican officials have tried to cover up the murder completely in order to salvage the local tourism industry, which is the breadbasket of much of Mexico’s economy. The case is seen as a failure to protect Canadians abroad by local governments as well as the Canadian government itself. Despite the Iannero case and cases of other Canadians killed in Mexico over the last year, there still seems to be a heavy Canadian tourist presence in Mexico.

For more information on the Iannero Report:
W-FIVE Special Report (CTV)
History of the Iannero Case (CBC)
Canadian Impressions of Security in Mexico (securitycornermexico.com)

Mexico City’s Legislative Assembly voted 46-19 to legalize abortion, and the city’s progressive mayor is expected to approve it.  President Felipe Calderon’s conservative party and the Catholic Church have spoken out against the city’s actions.

Martha Micher, director of the Mexico City government’s Women’s Institute, estimates that 200,000 women have illegal abortions in Mexico each year. Micher told the New York Times that botched abortions using herbal remedies and quasi-medical procedures kill 1,500 Mexican women each year and has been the third-leading cause of death for pregnant women in the capital city.

The only Latin American and Caribbean countries with legalized abortion for all women are Cuba and Guyana. Nicaragua, Chile, and El Salvador ban it completely, while other countries make exceptions for cases of rape and when the woman’s health is in risk.

In Mexico, abortion is banned except in the case of rape, severe birth defects, or a risk to the woman’s health, although some doctors reportedly refuse to perform the procedure even in those cases. The new Mexico City measure would allow for first-trimester abortions, requiring city hospitals to provide it and opening the door for private clinics as well. The procedure will be almost free for poor and insured patients.

Mexico City’s independent legislature is dominated by the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, which is at odds on the issue with President Calderon’s conservative National Action Party. Supporters of the city’s actions hope that it will have wider impact in promoting the decriminalization of abortion elsewhere, while opponents are planning to challenge the new law in Mexico’s Supreme Court.

(AP Photo: Rally in Mexico City)

Contributed by Rich Basas of FPA’s Migration Blog: 

Rapid double digit economic growth in China and its newly minted membership in the WTO has greatly changed the world economy and China’s position as an economic and political power. This view, while prominent within China is more importantly the dominant view among its neighbors abroad. Much of the trade between China and economic powerhouses such as the US and EU have grown exponentially in the last 7 years, so much so that US debt is owed principally to China equaling a third of all US foreign debt and much of the US manufacturing base moving to China for low labour costs in the process.

Fears of losing American jobs have traditionally been the focus of political debate in the US due to the small economic boom in Mexico which formed after the Peso Crisis in the early 1990s. The move of many multinational companies to the southern side of Mexican border to manufacture products from A-Zto be reshipped back into the US at low labour costs has been the cause for much of the anguish of local US labour unions over the last 12 years of NAFTA. While low cost goods have come across the border to American consumers, it also provided much of the employment base for Mexican manufacturing in Mexico and was a strong engine for the Mexican economy throughout the 1990s until today.

With the emergence of China however as the principle manufacturer of the world’s goods in recent years and China’s emergence as the world’s largest economy in the next few years, Mexico has slowly realized that it is being replaced as the principle low cost manufacturer of goods to North America. The realization that Mexico may lose one of its principle engines of its economy to China has lead to more involved policy towards China. A push for a bilateral investment agreement took shape in March 2007 and will be worked out further this June. The hope for Mexico is that a bilateral investment agreement will take shape before the end of 2007 and help reinstall Mexico as a leading trade partner with China and the US. Further relations have taken shape as well, with the two main Unions in China and Mexico in a personnel and information exchange agreed to this month and future commercial deals taking shape as well.

It is uncertain where Mexico will be placed in the future economy, but as one of the leading nations regarding trade agreements abroad, Mexico will use any advantage it has to maintain recent success in the Mexican economy past its early NAFTA years.

For more information on the stories:
Mexico’s Foreign Trade Strategy in Trouble: The Impact of China -
(G.Bracho: Oxford University)
Mexico, China to push forward Bilateral Investment Agreement - (China View)
Mexico, China trade union to include worker exchange - (China View)
China’s ZTE to build massive WiFi network for Mexico City - (Information Week)

Mexican soldiers have detained over 100 police officers in Nuevo Leon, a state bordering Texas.  They are being held and investigated on suspicion of aiding drug traffickers in what appears to be the latest effort of President Calderon’s administration to dispatch the military in fighting drug cartels.

For further information, see:
Soldiers arrest Mexican police in anti-drugs swoop (Reuters)
Officers arrested in Nuevo Leon (San Antonio Express)
Mexico drug cartels feud erupts (BBC)

Mexican businessman Carlos Slim Helu has surpassed Warren Buffet to take the number two position on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people.  Slim, now worth $53 billion, is approaching Bill Gates’ fortune of $56 for the top spot.  Slim owns Mexico’s dominant phone company and has numerous other holdings throughout Latin America.  His wealth highlights the gap between rich and poor in Mexico, where his fortune alone accounts for 7% of the GDP. 

Carlos Slim Helu Now World’s Second-Richest Man (Forbes)
Why Not All of Mexico is Happy for Carlos Slim (Time)

Contributed by Rich Basas of FPA’s Migration Blog: 

In Mexico’s “Dirty War” between 1968 and 1971, more than 600 people were “disappeared” for their political convictions. While much progress has been made with disappeared people in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay since the 1970s and the fall of military dictatorships in those countries, there has not been the same level of attention on disappeared Mexicans within Mexico or the international community like there was with many countries in South America.

With the lack of a strong military government in Mexico and the nature of the intricate political system under the 80 years of PRI rule in the country, finding information about missing people in the process was only plausible after the loss of the PRI’s political hegemony in Mexico and the political will of the new PAN government over the last 7 years.

Jose Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch this week discussed the advances, or lack thereof, of the Special Prosecutor’s Office which was created under the Fox Administration to investigate the disappeared people during the 70’s in Mexico. Recently the office formally closed when the government published its agreement A/317/06 in the federal official newspaper. With the end of the investigation, not a single conviction was produced and only limited progress was made in uncovering the fate of hundreds of people who were “disappeared”.

In Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, while there have been many difficulties and conditions in prosecuting past disappearances and abuses, Vivanco suggests that: “Mexico must still find a way to meet its obligation to investigate and prosecute these cases.” While prosecutions have never been an easy task in any country, progression has come with new democratic governments in those countries most greatly affected by “disappeared” in the 1970s. With the election of another PAN government in Mexico, there must be some reconciliation in Mexico for the 600 missing people.

See: Mexico: Impunity for Past Rights Abuses Continues – Human Rights Watch

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled to allow the U.S. to continue its plan to fortify irrigation canals on the U.S. side of its border with Mexico to prevent seepage that has been used by farmers across the border in Mexicali Valley. In 2005, two U.S. environmental groups and a Mexican community group sued to stop the concrete lining plan, but the federal court’s decision will allow the planned fortification to proceed by lifting the injunction that had previously blocked work on the canal.

The lining project is designed to provide 67,000 acre-feet of water to San Diego County, enough for the home use of 500,000 people.

To read the Court’s decision, see Consejo de Desarrollo v. U.S.A.

Coverage of the Decision:
Court backs canal expansion in U.S.-Mexico dispute (San Diego Tribune - Reuters)
Court OKs Water Work Opposed by Mexicans (Guardian - AP)

Amado Ramirez, a correspondent for Mexico’s most popular news network, Televisa, was killed in a premeditated shooting on April 6th after a taping of his show. The perpetetrators have not yet been apprehended in what is the latest in a series of crimes targeting journalists. An official at the Inter-American Press Association has said that Mexico has become the most dangerous country in the Western Hemisphere for journalists today. Journalists have been targeted on orders from drug gangs, with seven killed since October, and several others disappeared or reporting death threats. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has demanded that the federal government immediately take on this latest case.

Groups demand justice for slain Mexican journalist (CNN.com)
Justice sought for murdered journalist (El Universal)