#even back when López won the elections

[idalaida]

Just to further clarify, there is a lot of stigma against religions other than catholicism in Mexico, so yes, antisemitism is a real problem, which jews and those who are perceived as jewish suffer from. Even if that may be part of the reason why Sheinbaum isn't outspoken about her being jewish, she has also made it very clear that religion has no place in her public persona.

The "left" in Mexico is moved by money. We see it not only in Morena, but also on president candidate Maynez's recently prominent political party Movimiento Ciudadano. This means that major public projects like Tren Maya have become the result of nation widespread scandals (stealing protected land from indigenous people, making millionaire deals for raw materials, sub-par, or outright dangerous installations).

I should specify by now that the other female candidate, Xóchitl Galvez, is a woman of indigenous descent who advocates for the far right, promoting the idea that people aren't the most important thing for a government but companies and enterprises are, so you get the idea why I have gray hairs now.

The government of Morena is usually known as the "government of the other data," wherein López Obrador preached daily for almost 6 years about how the statistics presented to him are bizarrely never that bad. This is an attitude that Sheinbaum has copied since the beginning of her campaign and more famously during the last presidential debate when she said that there were no feminicides (my keyboard doesn't let me use that word???) in Mexico city anymore. Before that, there's videos and interviews where she affirms that mothers of victims are either fame-seeking or trying to make her lose face during the campaigns.

To end this, I believe that while Morena has probably expended some impressive digits on promoting their international image, I hope people living in Mexico give a more comprehensive look into how the government actually is like. I know other latinos will see these notes and think, "Yes, it checks out" without reading any more into it, but i highly encourage that you do.

As someone from Mexico I feel deeply obligated to let the US left know that Claudia Sheinbaum is neither of these things and while having a women rule the country for the first time is a historic achievement it is not the win you think it is

She is of jewish descent and made one statement for Palestine but never pressured the mexican goverment to break ties with Israel and one of her proposals as a president is to give the military here ( that btw is trained by the Isr*eli army) more power

As the mayor of Mexico City she constantly used the riot police against protestors and allowed the use of tear gas ( which she later claimed wasn't true)

She calls herself a feminist but always refused to acknowledge the wave of violence Mexico faces against women ( 11 women dissapear every day in Mexico) She has also knowingly made men accused of SA part of her campaign team

She also supports "Tren Maya", a project that caused massive ecological devastation in the mayan jungle and facilitated military violence against indigenous communities

You don't live here, you don't know shit so please don't push this kind of narrative idolizing these people

this is not a win for us

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, July 5, 2023

Gunman Kills Four in Southwest Philadelphia, Police Say (AP) A gunman wearing a bulletproof vest opened fire on the streets of Philadelphia on Monday night, seemingly at a random, killing four people and wounding two boys in the latest outbreak of gun violence in the United States, police said. The shootings took place over several city blocks in the southwestern neighborhood of Kingsessing. Responding officers chased the suspect as he continued to fire, and he was arrested in an alley after surrendering, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said at a news conference. He had a bulletproof vest, an “AR-type rifle,” multiple magazines, a handgun and a police scanner, she said.

Why Car Repairs Have Become So Expensive (NYT) New cars and trucks are packed with sensors and technology that protect and pamper drivers and passengers. But those features are also raising the cost of repairs after accidents. The average cost of making damaged cars good as new has soared 36% since 2018, and may top $5,000 by the end of this year, according to Mitchell, a company that provides data and software to insurance companies and auto repair businesses. That big increase is the main reason that insurance premiums have been soaring—up 17% in the 12 months through May. New SUVs and pickup trucks, including a rapidly growing number of electric models, have become so complex and luxurious that seemingly simple repairs can cost a small fortune, auto experts said. Insurers are often on the hook for much of those costs, leading them to raise their rates. Materials designed to crumple or deform in a crash to protect pedestrians or passengers, for example, can be hard or impossible to repair. Many bumpers must be replaced after low-speed dings because the safety sensors embedded in them may no longer work properly after repairs. Other systems, even some that do not appear to be damaged, must be inspected or recalibrated.

A good six months for billionaires (Bloomberg) The world’s 500 richest people added $852 billion to their fortunes in the first half of 2023. Each member of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, including big names like mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, made an average of $14 million per day over the past six months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It was the best half-year for billionaires since the back half of 2020, when the economy began to rebound from the Covid-19 recession.

Mexico’s old ruling party fractures following election loss (AP) Mexico’s old ruling party fractured Monday, with four leading senators resigning amid internal disputes and the loss of the last major state the party governed. The Institutional Revolutionary Parties held the presidency and almost all statehouses in Mexico without interruption for 70 years. But the PRI, as the party is known, has been reduced to a shadow of its former self by the rise of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Morena party, which won the governorship of the last major PRI bastion, the State of Mexico, last month. Morena has seized on the combination of handout programs and nationalism that the PRI once espoused, and has largely replaced it. The PRI, which now governs only two sparsely populated states, is now Mexico’s fourth biggest party, trailing Morena, the conservative National Action Party and the centrist Citizen’s Movement.

Why do French protesters burn so many cars? (Worldcrunch) Following a police shooting of 17-year-old Nahel M. during a traffic stop, police say that at least 2,000 cars were set on fire, and 3,880 other blazes were reported at the protests around the country. It would seem counting the number of burned cars after nights of social unrest has become something of a tradition in France. But why? During the late 1990s, a trend of burning cars on New Year’s Eve emerged in certain neighborhoods of the eastern city of Strasbourg. The car fires spread across France and acquired an almost ritualistic nature. Two French sociologists, Gérard Mauger and Michel Wieviorka, explained that the phenomenon evolved from a competition between suburb districts, trying to outdo each other in the number of times their district makes the headlines. The level of attention from the media is of course a factor. The sight of cars engulfed in flames on dimly lit streets captures interest. “If it’s not too shocking to say, it seems to me that this ‘French phenomenon’ is the result of cooperation between the media and the gangs living on the estates,” Mauger told France Info.

After Armed Rebellion, Putin Tries to Reinforce His Defenses (NYT) President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is said to work out of identically constructed offices at multiple residences so that photographs don’t reveal his location. His assistants undergo such a rigorous selection process that a former bodyguard once called them “a caste of chosen people.” And more than three years after the pandemic’s beginning, the Kremlin has continued to enforce a “clean zone” around the president, requiring many who come near him to quarantine for days. For decades, people who know him say, Mr. Putin has been remarkably focused on his personal security and on preventing rivals from using the powers of government against him. Now, in the aftermath of last month’s short-lived rebellion led by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner private mercenary group that fought for Russia in Ukraine, Mr. Putin appears to be scrambling to coup-proof his system once more. He is rewarding loyalty among the ruling elite and showering his most important constituency—the men with guns (soldiers, police officers and other security agency employees)—with cash. And, so far, he has avoided the sort of large-scale purge that other authoritarian leaders have carried out in response to coup attempts or rebellions, perhaps to avoid destabilizing his system further. “The president is acting very rationally,” said Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist. “He is focused on his personal and political survival, and he’s ready for anything to accomplish that.”

Russia says it foiled Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow (AP) Russian air defenses on Tuesday foiled a Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow that prompted authorities to briefly close one of the city’s international airports, officials said. The Russian Defense Ministry said four of the five drones were downed by air defenses on the outskirts of Moscow and the fifth was jammed by electronic warfare means and forced down. The drone attack prompted authorities to temporarily restrict flights at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport and divert flights to two other Moscow main airports. Vnukovo is about 15 kilometers (9 miles) southwest of Moscow. The raid came as Ukrainian forces have continued probing Russian defenses in the south and the east of their country in the initial stages of a counteroffensive.

China curbs exports of key computer chip materials (BBC) The Chinese government is tightening controls over exports of two key materials used to make computer chips. From next month, special licenses will be needed to export gallium and germanium from China, which is the world's biggest producer of the metals. It comes after Washington's efforts to curb Chinese access to some advanced microprocessors. Semiconductors, which power everything from mobile phones to military hardware, are at the centre of a bitter dispute between the world's two largest economies. The US has taken steps to restrict China's access to technology it fears could be put to military use, such as chips used for supercomputing and artificial intelligence.

Hong Kong police offer hefty reward for intel on political exiles (Washington Post) Hong Kong police have offered a reward of up to 1 million Hong Kong dollars ($127,000) for information that would bring about the arrest of the prominent activists who fled the city’s expanding clampdown on dissent. Authorities on Monday announced charges against eight individuals residing in the United States, Australia and Britain, marking the first time a cash reward has been offered for individuals living abroad who are accused of violating a strict national security law. Kevin Yam, who now lives in Melbourne and is one of those on the wanted list, said he would not be deterred from talking publicly about the situation in Hong Kong. “I am an Australian citizen exercising my freedom of speech as an Australian in Australia to speak about a city that gave me everything, which I still love,” said Yam, a nonresident senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Asian Law. Human rights groups decried the “bounty” as an attempt to silence and intimidate critics even after they were forced to leave home, with the cause they once fought for all but banished from public discussion.

Japan’s Native Ainu Fight to Restore a Last Vestige of Their Identity (NYT) Masaki Sashima gazed through the fog one recent afternoon onto the gray waters of the Tokachi River in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island. From here, his Indigenous people, the Ainu, once used spears and nets to catch the salmon they regarded as gifts from the gods. Under Japanese law, river fishing for this salmon, an essential part of Ainu cuisine, trade and spiritual culture, has been off limits for more than a century. Mr. Sashima, 72, said it was time for his people to regain what they see as a natural right, and restore one of the last vestiges of a decimated Ainu identity. Mr. Sashima is leading a group that is suing the central and prefectural governments to reclaim salmon fishing rights, four years after Japan’s Parliament passed a law recognizing the Ainu as the nation’s Indigenous people. For centuries, Japanese assimilation policies have stripped the Ainu of their land, forced them to give up hunting and fishing for farming or other menial jobs, and pushed them into Japanese-language schools where it was impossible to preserve their own language. “Japan is a country that says it follows the rule of law, but in terms of Indigenous rights, they are very behind,” said Shiro Kayano, director of a private museum in eastern Hokkaido and the son of the only Ainu to serve in the Japanese Parliament.

Activists in Lebanon are fighting to reclaim dwindling public spaces (Washington Post) To get to a park in Karantina, an impoverished neighborhood near this city’s blast-destroyed port, two children on a recent day had to climb a utility pole and jump over a spiked iron fence because the park, with trees and a jungle gym, is always closed. It is a story repeated across Lebanon, where people are reeling from an economic crisis and desperate to breathe, but where open spaces are often shut, in short supply or reserved for those who can pay. “There are barely any public spaces in Lebanon. Public gardens are often closed, and most of the places either are privately owned or you need a permit from the municipality to get in,” said Maggie Najem, who is fighting to keep her local beach open in northern Lebanon. Mohammad Ayoub, who heads the public space advocacy group Nahnoo, says little has changed since he was a kid in the 1990s, when he and his friends would play in vacant lots “in any way we could.” Now, he added, all the empty spaces have been turned into parking lots. Ayoub says he believes the situation has little to do with Lebanon’s financial crisis or the pandemic, pointing out that officials kept the city’s largest park, Horsh Beirut, closed for 25 years and only partly reopened it in 2014. Rather, he blames policymakers who he says are not interested in providing public services or making investments in parks, unless it involves building parking lots beneath them.

Israel ends West Bank raid calling it a blow to militants. Palestinians grapple with destruction (AP) Israel withdrew troops from a West Bank militant stronghold Wednesday but warned that its most intense military operation in the occupied territory in nearly two decades was not a one-off. Twelve Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed in the two-day raid. Residents of the Jenin refugee camp emerged from their homes to find alleys lined by piles of rubble and flattened or scorched cars. Shopkeepers and bulldozers started clearing the debris. Thousands who had fled the fighting began returning. The army claimed to have inflicted heavy damage on militant groups in the operation which included a series of airstrikes and hundreds of ground troops. But it remained unclear whether there would be any lasting effect after nearly a year and a half of heavy fighting in the West Bank.

[antoine-roquentin]

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also known as “AMLO”, is the leader of the new Mexican center-left political party named the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA). Obrador is one of the three main candidates for Mexico’s 2018 presidential elections. This will be the third time he has run for election in Mexico’s presidential race, and he is determined to achieve his goal this time.

Back in 2006, when he first campaigned to become president of Mexico, he lost to right-wing Felipe Calderón from the National Action Party (PAN) who won by a mere 0.5% of the vote, but there were many controversies and irregularities that surrounded that year’s election, mainly allegations of electoral fraud.

Then, in the 2012 presidential elections, López Obrador lost by a larger margin (by about 7%) to current Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). There were many irregularities in that election also. The National Electoral Institute (INE), the agency in charge of overseeing the elections to assure that elections are legal and honest, admitted just in January that Peña Nieto’s campaign received illegal financing and dark money, that there were widespread allegations of coercion and vote buying by the PRI, and that the campaign even paid the people who were in charge of the polls so they could benefit Peña Nieto when they counted the votes.

All of this has led López Obrador to take “desperate measures” in order to win the 2018 elections. One of his decisions and probably one of the most controversial ones among leftist voters was the one of forming an electoral coalition with the Social Encounter Party (PES).

The Social Encounter Party is a far-right political party in Mexico created in 2006 by Hugo Eric Flores, a neo-Pentecostal pastor that supported Felipe Calderón’s campaign for Mexico’s presidency in the State of Baja California and turned it into a National Party in 2014. It has branded itself as the “Party of the Family” and its electoral base is mainly conformed by evangelical Christians. The Social Encounter Party’s own name forms an acronym which resembles the word “Pez” (fish in Spanish) which is a symbol commonly used by Christians. In its home State, Baja California, the Social Encounter Party even uses the openly-religious ichthus symbol as their party logo, although it doesn’t use it nationally.

The PES, obviously, is against same-sex marriage, abortion, contraception and even sexual education in schools. It is also the first and only Mexican Party to be openly pro-Israel even though Mexico has had a long history of non-intervention and neutrality when it comes to world affairs.

The PES was also responsible for the passing of a law in Baja California which would allow religious people and churches to discriminate if they did so because of religious reasons. The law is not valid though because Art. 1 of the Mexican Constitution states that discrimination can’t be legal in any form or circumstance (yes, even for religious reasons).

The Social Encounter Party was also very supportive of the 2016 mass protests in Mexico against same-sex marriage.

Norma Edith Martínez, a PES Congresswoman, rejected Peña Nieto’s 2016 proposal for legalizing same-sex marriage by stating that it would cause people to start marrying dolphins and laptops. This same congresswoman even created a bill that would not only allow doctors to not take care of patients if they couldn’t because of “religious convictions”, but it also sought to call sexual education in schools as “pornography”.

The Social Encounter Party is not only a conservative party, but a Christian Supremacist one, and this has created a lot of outrage from leftist voters against MORENA. Even long-time AMLO supporters, like writer Elena Poniatowska, have shown opposition to this coalition, but the people most hurt and angry by this decision are the LGBTQ+ community, feminists, and secular people, since they feel that MORENA (AMLO’s party) is throwing them under the bus just so they can now seek far-right evangelical voters.

Many LGBTQ+ activists have openly protested at AMLO rallies and meetings, like the time transwoman-activist Diana Bayardo Marroquín recriminated AMLO for the lack of support offered by the Labor Party (PT) and PES (both part of his electoral coalition) when it comes to same-sex marriage, to which Obrador simply responded that he would respect LGBTQ+ rights.

Some people may think, “Well, the PES is horrible on social issues, but it must be good on economic ones, right?”. The answer is no.

The PES has supported numerous neoliberal reforms pushed by the Peña Nieto administration, which have pretty much sought to dismantle the state-owned oil company PEMEX. Currently, they are trying to privatize education.

The PES also went into an electoral Coalition with the PRI for the State of Mexico’s gubernatorial Elections which ended in apparent electoral fraud. Just some months ago, many political analysts went so far as to call the PES a “satellite party” of the PRI.

The Social Encounter Party members are also in favor of eliminating public funding for political parties, which would privatize elections and create a system were bribery by corporations would be legal, just like in the United States.

López Obrador has stated why he decided to create a coalition with the PES, a party which only has a 3% support nationally, and he’s said that it is because MORENA “respects all beliefs systems and religions”, that the alliance has a “moral foundation”, and that he does it for the “good of the soul”.

AMLO also plans to give the PES 25% of the coalition’s candidacies, which is a lot considering that MORENA is far more popular than the PES in every way imaginable. López Obrador really wants to win in these elections, but allying with the far-right is not worth it at all. The 3% support that PES will give to MORENA is not enough to justify an alliance with Christian supremacists and even less to throw women’s, LGBTQ+ and secular people’s rights under the bus.

AMLO is up in the polls, by about 14% according to some, and even if he loses, he will be increasing the number of PES politicians in Congress by a lot, considering PES has no senators and only 10 deputies of the 500 that make up the Mexican Chamber of Deputies [so far, it appears that they picked up quite a few seats in the Senate, but their vote total appears to be lower for the Chamber than in the last election, although counting is not finished edit: counting is finished, they picked up 58 seats in the chamber and 5 in the senate, although the MORENA + PT vote seems to hold a slim majority in both chambers]. The PES is benefiting from the coalition far more than MORENA is, and the only thing that AMLO is doing is alienating leftist voters.

Yes, AMLO has said that he would “respect LGBTQ+ rights”, but that doesn’t mean anything. That statement doesn’t even mean he would legalize same-sex marriage. The only times López Obrador has talked about legalizing same-sex marriage and abortion was when he said he would put a vote on it so people can decide if it should be legal or not, but hey: human rights shouldn’t be put to debate. AMLO even said in 2015 that legalizing same-sex marriage and abortion was “not something important”.

The reason why AMLO is up in the polls is not because “people love his alliance with PES” but because he is literally the lesser of all the evils, considering the other options are the right-wing Catholic PAN, the neoliberal and heavily authoritarian PRI, and three Independent candidates that were part of corrupt political parties (as recently as just a few months ago in the case of Margarita Zavala and Armando Ríos Piter).

People are tired of the current political climate and the traditional political parties (PRI, PAN, and PRD). AMLO should use this to his advantage and show everyone that MORENA isn’t like the other parties. Obrador’s alliances with the PES, PT and former PRI and PAN politicians are turning him into the very thing he sought to destroy.

[politicoscope]

Juan Guaido Biography and Profile

New Post has been published on https://www.politicoscope.com/juan-guaido-biography-and-profile/

Juan Guaido Biography and Profile

Juan Guaido (Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez) was born on 28 July 1983, one of seven children in the port city of La Guaira in the state of Vargas. Guaido and his family survived a catastrophic mudslide in 1999 that killed thousands of people and destroyed thousands of homes in La Guaira.

“Seeing your daily life wiped out from one day to the next forced us to detach ourselves from material things, but brought us closer,” Juan Guaidó told the newspaper El Nacional.

Juan Gerardo Guaido Marquez, an industrial engineer by training, began organizing demonstrations against Hugo Chavez more than a decade ago after the late leader silenced critics by refusing to renew the broadcast license of Venezuela’s most popular television channel. Guaido formed a close relationship with Leopoldo Lopez and helped the former Caracas mayor establish the Popular Will party. Even with Lopez under house arrest, they talk several times a day.

He joined the National Assembly in 2011, serving as an alternate until he was elected in 2016 as representative for the state of Vargas — a position that he currently holds. He was among several lawmakers who went on a hunger strike demanding parliamentary elections in 2015. He was a relative unknown until he was chosen to lead Venezuela’s legislative body. Guaido was briefly detained by Venezuelan government operatives on the way to a political rally, days after he said he was ready to replace Maduro. As a legislator, he visited a disputed zone between Venezuela and Guyana that dates back to 1966. He also took part in the hunger strike to pressure the National Electoral Council (CNE), which was controlled by Chávez loyalists, to set a date for the parliamentary elections that the opposition eventually won on Dec. 6, 2015.

Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez Full Biography and Profile Juan Gerardo Guaido Marquez’s partner is Fabiana Rosales, a fellow student leader. Their daughter, Miranda, named after a forerunner to South American independence hero Simon Bolivar, was born amid the 2017 wave of protests, during which her father was hit in the neck by plastic buckshot and broke his hand in clashes with police.

Guaido’s party, Voluntad Popular (Popular Will or Will of the People) is a centrist social-democratic party. It holds just 14 of the national assembly’s 167 seats, but is a member of the Democratic Unity Roundtable coalition, which holds a super majority in the assembly.

According to the party’s website, its origins date back to 2004. It was formed to “promote social action and social leadership,” and it was officially recognized as a party in 2011.

Its manifesto states that it seeks to “bring together Venezuelans to work toward peace, freedom and democracy” and to “build a more secure, united and prosperous country where everyone will be entitled to all rights.”

The party was co-founded and is currently led by Leopoldo Lopez, a well-known political prisoner in Venezuela and Guaido’s mentor.

In his short career, Guaido has been applauded for building unity among fellow legislators. Now his challenge is to do the same across the country, channeling the desperate desire for change within the limits of a regime intent on suppressing dissent. “The situation has catapulted him into the spotlight,” Romero said.

“He’s breathed new life into the opposition,” said David Smilde, an analyst for the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group. “The opposition has finally put forward a fresh face that has courage, new ideas and leadership skills that has started to revive them.”

Already, some in the military have taken up Mr. Guaidó’s call, staging a brief act of resistance at a military base in Caracas, which was followed by violent protests after it was put down.

Mr. Maduro called the opposition a bunch of “little boys,” saying they were pawns of the Trump administration. María Iris Varela Rangel, a top politician in Maduro’s party, wrote on Twitter: “Guaidó: I have already gotten your jail cell ready with the right uniform, and I hope you name your cabinet quickly to know who will keep you company, you stupid kid.”

Mr. Guaidó’s challenge to Mr. Maduro comes at a time when his presidency faces mounting challenges of legitimacy. On Jan. 10, the president was sworn in for a second six-year term after a disputed election in May that many countries did not recognize.

“People have been frustrated with the opposition, and tired of the same old faces of the politicians of the old establishment that have failed,” said Margarita López Maya, a retired political scientist in Caracas who taught at the Central University of Venezuela.

Does Guaidó have a chance at taking power? Guaidó called the mass protests on Jan. 23 in order to get a show of public support for his plan to take over the presidency. “We will stay in the streets until we have freedom for Venezuela,” Guaido told supporters and television cameras at the protest. “We will fight back until we have democracy.”

Small-scale protests happen on a daily basis in Venezuela over food shortages and labor rights. But if demonstrations become large enough to overwhelm security forces’ ability contain them, that could trigger “a break in the chain of command within the military,” Moya-Ocampos says. “Then it is possible they could withdraw their support for Maduro.”

Juan Guaido has declared himself president of Venezuela — a move quickly endorsed by several Latin American countries, as well as Canada and the United States. Many people around the world, and even inside Venezuela, may not have known Guaido’s name.

Foreign officials, particularly in the United States, who want to see a transitional government in Venezuela, say they saw in Mr. Guaidó a fresh-faced leader from humble origins who contrasted with previous opposition leaders, whom Mr. Maduro disparaged as oligarchs and right-wing extremists.

While the United States recognized Mr. Guaidó as Venezuela’s leader, senior American officials have denounced Mr. Maduro as a dictator and made clear their support for Mr. Guaidó’s effort to oust Mr. Maduro and set up a transitional government. Last year, Trump administration officials met in secret with rebellious members of the military to discuss their plans to overthrow Mr. Maduro.

Vice President Mike Pence spoke directly to the Venezuelan people in a video released on YouTube and Twitter on Tuesday, calling Mr. Maduro a “dictator with no legitimate claim to power.” Mr. Pence said he recognized the National Assembly, led by Mr. Guaidó, as “the last vestige of democracy in your country,” and stated that, “we are with you, we stand with you, and we will stay with you until democracy is restored and you reclaim your birthright of libertad.”

In response, Mr. Maduro said Tuesday evening that he had ordered a “a total and absolute revision” of relations with the United States. He provided no details on what that might produce, but said decisions would be imminent.

“Who elects the president of Venezuela? Mike Pence?” Mr. Maduro asked during a live address on state television.

With short black hair peppered with grey, he had never one for these big public speeches, but Guaidó pushed himself to become the leader of a divided and unstructured opposition, whose biggest leaders were imprisoned, exiled or out of action.

“Guaidó is a fresh young man, and educated — he looks like the people, he talks like the people, he is a survivor and a family man, and also had prospects in big-league baseball,” José Manuel Bolívar, one of his party directors said.

Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez Biography and Profile (Politicoscope / NYT / Reuters / Time)

[ladystylestores]

Mexico’s Leftist Leader Rejects Big Spending to Ease Virus’s Sting

MEXICO CITY — For the second time in a month, top business leaders sat down with Mexico’s president to implore him to do more to save the economy.

People were losing jobs by the tens of thousands, they warned. Small and medium-size companies, which employ more than 70 percent of the Mexican work force, were running out of cash. The government needed to intervene, they argued. The data was irrefutable.

“I have other data,” shrugged the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, according to two businesspeople with direct knowledge of that conversation in April. “You do whatever you think you need to do, and I’ll do what I need to do.”

Across the globe, governments have rushed to pump cash into flailing economies, hoping to stave off the pandemic’s worst financial fallout.

They have mustered trillions of dollars for stimulus measures to keep companies afloat and employees on the payroll. The logic: When the pandemic finally passes, economies will not have to start from scratch to bounce back.

In Mexico, no such rescue effort has come. The pandemic could lead to an economic reckoning worse than anything Mexico has seen in perhaps a century. More jobs were lost in April than were created in all of 2019. A recent report by a government agency said as many as 10 million people could fall into poverty this year.

Yet most economists estimate that Mexico will increase spending only slightly — by less than 1 percent of its economy — a small amount compared with many large nations.

The reason? Critics and supporters agree: Mr. López Obrador.

Hostile toward bailouts, loath to take on public debt and deeply mistrustful of most business leaders, Mexico’s president has opted largely to sit tight despite what is expected to be widespread pain up and down the economic ladder.

“The government should help the private sector as much as it can, otherwise our gross domestic product could drop as much as 10 percent, which would be a disaster,” said Carlos M. Urzúa, a former minister of finance under Mr. López Obrador.

“It can be done,” Mr. Urzúa continued, noting the relatively low public debt levels in Mexico. But “López Obrador really has no clue of the storm that is coming.”

In a time of utter polarization in Mexico, when reactions to Mr. López Obrador vacillate between complete devotion from supporters and vitriolic anger from detractors, the need to mount an economic response has offered a rare glimmer of unity.

Still, Mr. López Obrador, a populist leftist, has resisted the pressure to do more, wary of taking on public debt and saddling the country with bills it may struggle to pay down the road.

Some of the pressure on Mr. López Obrador has come from predictable places: opposition politicians, pro-market economists and the wealthy business community, groups that tend to find wrong in nearly every step he takes.

But members of the president’s own cabinet have also urged him to take action, arguing that failing to do so could cripple the nation, government officials say. So, too, have federal bank officials and a range of economists sympathetic to his politics.

“Every day counts,” said Santiago Levy, an economist who was offered the role of finance minister in Mr. López Obrador’s government shortly after his election in 2018. “A recession was inevitable, but the cost of not doing more is going to be a much longer and deeper recession.”

A group of state governors, including one from Mr. López Obrador’s own party, has formed a coalition to demand that he do more to help them financially. Some have even threatened the equivalent of financial secession.

“We need a strategy of unity, and instead we have received absolutely nothing,” said Martín Orozco Sandoval, the governor of Aguascalientes in central Mexico.

The government says it will take a cautious approach to bailouts and heavy spending.

Graciela Márquez, the secretary of the economy, challenged assertions that Mexico could easily increase debt to spend more. The cost would be prohibitive, she said, and taking on debt liberally could ultimately be more problematic than beneficial.

“If at a certain point we need to raise more debt, we will,” said Mrs. Márquez, a Harvard-trained economist. “It’s not a closed-off road.”

For now, the government is spending more, she said, including by issuing micro-credits and other payments to the most vulnerable people.

As for whether that additional spending is sufficient, she noted that even the $2 trillion stimulus package in the United States has not been enough.

“What is sufficient under these conditions?” she asked. “It must be done responsibly, without generating more problems than the ones it is trying to resolve.”

Economic damage from the pandemic is a given. But the difference between a long, protracted crisis and a meaningful recovery, in the eyes of many economists, depends on a government’s ability to help companies and workers stay afloat until the worst is over.

European nations have spent trillions to counter the financial devastation and are considering raising more than $800 billion in collective debt to stave off economic collapse.

Some of Mexico’s Latin American neighbors have acted decisively: Chile, Peru and Brazil have all passed packages valued at 8 percent to 12 percent of their economies.

But in Mexico — between tiny business loans and spending for cash-transfer programs for the poor, the young and the elderly — additional government spending is less than 1 percent of the economy, most economists calculate.

Even before the coronavirus hit, Mexico was in recession. But the government agency that measures poverty recently said that 6.1 million to 10.7 million Mexicans could be cast into poverty by the end of the year. The president rejected that assessment and placed the number of formal jobs lost at around one million.

The actions taken so far include a series of microloans of about $1,000 to tiny businesses in both the informal and formal sectors. Experts say the two million loans available will barely scratch the surface of the informal market, where some 30 million people work.

And the money is not a grant; it is a loan that struggling mom-and-pop stores will need to start repaying in a few months.

“Mexico is way below the world’s average in terms of the amount of resources being channeled to help the economy,” said Oberto Vélez Grajales, an economist at Centro de Estudios Espinoza Yglesias, a left-leaning research group.

The president’s resistance, according to those who know him, is based on his interpretation of Mexico’s troubled financial history.

Having lived through numerous financial crises, including sharp devaluations of the currency and defaults on debt, he believes that bailouts and rescues simply do not work, they say.

He even wrote a book about the government bailout of the financial sector after the 1994 economic collapse known as the Tequila Crisis. Many viewed that aid as a poorly managed effort that lined the pockets of the wealthy.

Many economists and analysts say Mexico can afford to increase debt to help weather the crisis. But from the moment he took office, Mr. López Obrador, while calling himself a leftist, has won praise from analysts and economists for being a fiscal conservative.

To pay for the ambitious infrastructure projects and poverty programs central to his vision, the president has cut federal programs and his own ministries, unlike his predecessor, who ran a budget deficit.

But with the coronavirus lashing small, medium and large businesses, clinging to a more traditional vision of debt and bailouts has come under fire. So have the president’s pet projects, which he views as essential for the country.

Mr. López Obrador has dubbed his efforts the “fourth transformation,” seeking to imbue his tenure with the historical brio of Mexico’s independence from Spain and its revolution.

As part of that, he has promised large-scale infrastructure projects, including a $8 billion oil refinery and a tourist train to circumnavigate the Mayan region of southeastern Mexico.

Even as oil prices have plunged and experts have questioned the utility of the oil refinery, the president has held fast to his commitment to construct one.

In fact, he says, none of his marquis projects, including the multibillion-dollar train, will be sacrificed to the virus.

“This is typical AMLO, and yet it still surprises me,” said Carlos Elizondo, a former Mexican ambassador to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, using the president’s nickname. “No other country in the world, amid a world pandemic and an emergency like this, continues on the same track.”

The president’s persistence has worked for him in the past. He lost two elections for the presidency but maintained his message against corruption and for benefits for the poor.

In 2018, Mexicans tired of rampant graft and inequality brought Mr. López Obrador to power with the most resounding victory the country had seen in decades.

“AMLO’s great strength was his stubbornness,” Mr. Elizondo continued. “Now, Mexico’s great weakness at a time when the world has changed is having a president that refuses to adapt to a new reality.”

Those close to the president say he believes that the coronavirus, while serious, is transitory and that his mark on his nation’s history, punctuated by the symbols of large, state-led projects, will outlast the current headwinds.

He says that having a clean conscience fights the virus. “No lying, no stealing, no betraying, that helps a lot to not get coronavirus,” he told reporters.

While critics demand that he shutter his infrastructure projects and channel the money into a rescue package, some economists say it would not be enough, anyway.

“At the end of the day, the amount of money being spent on infrastructure projects in 2020 is not that important,” said Mr. Levy, the economist. “The political significance is way beyond economic significance. It’s a little bit like Trump’s wall.”

“But you need to protect formal employment, and we need to do more to help informal workers,” he added.

Instead, state governors are vowing mutiny, and a tableau of economic disaster threatens the nation.

Tourism has all but dried up. Remittances from the United States are expected to plummet. And with oil prices flirting close to historical lows, Mexico’s economy has lost yet another engine.

“For all of them to take this hit at the same time is devastating,” said Roberta S. Jacobson, a former American ambassador to Mexico. “And meanwhile, the president appears to be only doubling down on policies he already had in place.”

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Mexico-US Tariff Deal: Questions, Concerns for Migration

As Washington and Mexico City both took victory laps Saturday over a deal that headed off threatened tariffs on Mexican imports, it remained to be seen how effective it may be and migration experts raised concerns over what it could mean for people fleeing poverty and violence in Central America.

Other than a vague reiteration of a joint commitment to promote development, security and growth in Central America, the agreement focuses almost exclusively on enforcement and says little about the root causes driving the surge in migrants seen in recent months.

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"My sense is overall the Mexican government got out of this better than they thought. The agreement though leaves a lot of big question marks," said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute. "It's good that the two sides reached an agreement which allows both of them to save face, but it's not clear how easy it is to implement."

The deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops appears to be the key commitment in what was described as "unprecedented steps" by Mexico to ramp up enforcement, though Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero said that had already been planned and was not a result of external pressure.

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"I have said before, migration into Mexico also has to be regulated ... orderly, legal and safe," Sánchez Cordero told The Associated Press. "So the National Guard that we were going to deploy anyway, we're going to deploy. It's not because they tell us to, but rather because we're going to do it anyway."

Mexico was already increasing enforcement such as detentions, deportations and checkpoints. In recent weeks it broke up the latest migrant caravan, snuffing out most appetite for traveling in large, visible groups.

With Mexico Deal Done, US Urges China to Resume Trade Talks

If Mexico does more as promised, it's likely to be seen in intensifications of those same efforts, experts said — raids on hotels where migrants stay or on bus companies transporting them north to the U.S. border. The two countries also agreed to collaborate to share information on and disrupt people-smuggling networks, a new focus seen earlier this week when Mexico arrested two migration activists and froze accounts of over two dozen people alleged to have organized caravans.

A concern is that even more aggressive enforcement could put migrants with legitimate asylum claims at risk of being deported from Mexico to the dangers they fled in the first place. Also, Mexican security forces are known for often being corrupt and shaking migrants down for bribes. A renewed crackdown is seen as making migration through Mexico more difficult and more dangerous, but doing little to discourage Central Americans desperate to escape poverty, hunger and violence.

"People are fleeing their homes regardless of what the journey might mean and regardless of what chance they may have for seeking protections in Mexico or in the United States," said Maureen Meyer, an immigration expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, "simply because they need to leave."

"It seems like in all these discussions (over tariffs and immigration) the human reality of these people and why they're leaving Central America was lost," she continued. "It was 'what can we do to stop them,' and not 'what can we really do to create the conditions in their home countries so that people don't have to leave.'"

Another key element of the deal is that the United States will expand a program known as the Migrant Protection Protocol, or MPP. According to Mexican immigration authorities, since January there have been 10,393 returns by migrants to Mexico while their cases wend their way through U.S. courts.

MPP has been plagued by glitches and so far has been introduced only in California and El Paso, Texas, and Selee said there are logistical hurdles to further expansion. Right now the MPP figure of 10,000 or so represents "a drop in the bucket" compared to overall migration, he added.

Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, who led the negotiations, said the agreement does not include any quotas.

If MPP does roll out on a mass scale along the United States' entire southern border, it could overwhelm Mexican border cities. Mexico promised to offer jobs, health care and education for returnees, but has little infrastructure to do so. Currently most shelters and support programs are run by the likes of NGOs and the Roman Catholic Church.

And if the program were to include places like Tamaulipas, the Gulf coast state where cartels and gangs control large swaths of territory, migrants could be at even greater risk.

"You know this is an area that the U.S. government considers that it's not safe for any American citizen," Meyer said, referring to the State Department's highest-level warning against all travel to Tamaulipas due to crime and kidnappings. "And yet it's OK for us to send people back there?"

Still, the deal was hailed by many in Mexican industry and politics.

Arturo Rocha, a Foreign Relations Department spokesman, tweeted late Friday that it was "an unquestionable triumph for Mexico." Avoiding tariffs sends a calming message to ratings agencies worried about a possible trade war, he said, adding that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's government had won U.S. recommitment to Central American development and resisted "safe third country" designation, a concession sought by Washington that would have required asylum seekers to apply first in Mexico.

However Abdel Camargo, an anthropologist at the Frontera Sur College in southern Mexico, said that by accepting MPP returnees, "Mexico does not become a safe third country but de facto is going to act as one."

Some such as ex-President Felipe Calderón of the conservative opposition National Action Party questioned whether Mexico was truly master of its own migratory policy. But José Antonio Meade, a five-time Cabinet minister who lost last year's election to López Obrador, praised Ebrard for avoiding damaging tariffs "in the face of very complex conditions."

In San Jose del Cabo for a summit of North American mayors, Juan Manuel Gastelum of Tijuana, across from San Diego, said he's fine with more migrants being returned to his city as long as the federal government invests in caring for them. He added that the threat of tariffs may have been necessary to force his country's hand.

"How else was Mexico going to understand that it is not right to leave migration uncontrolled?" said Gastelum, who is also a member of National Action.

Meanwhile, a rally later Saturday in Tijuana that López Obrador called to defend Mexican pride and dignity was expected to take on more of a festive atmosphere.

"It was (originally supposed to be) a meeting to show support for the incoming governor ... that turned into a demand for peace and respect on the tariffs issue," local restaurateur and businessman Francisco Villegas said. "But since the tariffs issue was sorted out by having Marcelo Ebrard and his team up there, it is now turning into a celebration."

Associated Press writer María Verza contributed.

Photo Credit: Gregory Bull/AP Mexico-US Tariff Deal: Questions, Concerns for Migration published first on Miami News

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Traditional Dresses as Resistance – The New York Times

The Look

Rarámuri women in Chihuahua, Mexico, have made an indigenous style of dress a means of fighting assimilation.

By midmorning on the Wednesday before Easter, the desert sun was gaining strength in Chihuahua, Mexico. So was the deep sound of beating cowhide drums in Oasis. This settlement, situated in the working-class neighborhood of Colonia Martín López, is home to approximately 500 Rarámuris, commonly known as Tarahumaras, an indigenous people who are fleeing drought, deforestation and drug growers in Sierra Madre.

In the city, their displacement is marked by other forms of hardship, which are magnified by the way the Rarámuri stand out.

The women dress in bright, ankle-length frocks — and often spend afternoons sewing traditional Rarámuri dresses — despite pressures from the people of mixed race who comprise most of Mexico’s population to assimilate with Western style. For Rarámuri people, assimilation is the same as erasure. But there’s a pervasive idea among many in Mexico that progress is dependent on severing ties with the country’s indigenous history.

Yulissa Ramírez, 18, wants to challenge that notion. She plans to attend nursing school after she graduates from high school, where the customary uniform is white scrubs, but hopes the program will allow her to wear a traditional white Rarámuri dress. “Our blood runs Rarámuri, and there’s no reason that we should feel ashamed,” Ms. Ramírez said, speaking in Spanish, as she held her infant son.

Her mother, María Refugio Ramírez, 43, sews each of her dresses by hand, following a dressmaking tradition that dates back to the 1500s, when Spain invaded the Sierra Madre mountains. Throughout the 1600s, Jesuit priests compelled Rarámuri women to wear dresses that fully covered their bodies. Over time, Rarámuri women adopted the cotton fabrics brought over by the Spaniards and made the dresses their own by adding triangle designs and colorful borders. Today they continue to hand-sew the bright floral garments, which stand out when the women venture beyond the Chihuahua state-funded settlement and into the urban landscape of gray concrete buildings and throngs of people in bluejeans.

Their unwillingness to conform with contemporary style has, at times, come at the cost of economic advancement. But some women seek to challenge that notion. Ms. Ramírez, for example, believes that completing her nursing program in traditional dress will be an important statement that Rarámuri people are a vital part of Mexico’s future — and present.

Other Rarámuris are monetizing their craft. For example, Esperanza Moreno, 44, embroiders tortilla warmers, aprons and dish cloths with depictions of Rarámuri women in traditional garb, and sells them to Mexican nonprofits who then resell the items to shops and Walmarts throughout the country. Rarámuri women have begun sewing traditional dresses to sell, as well.

On Holy Thursday, Ms. Moreno had taken the day off from the workshop outside the settlement where she sews modern-day garments that incorporate Rarámuri designs. The job provides a steady income for Ms. Moreno, whose husband is a contractor whose jobs often take him outside Chihuahua. It’s a line of work that has led to the kidnappings of some Rarámuri men; in vehicles that look like work-site shuttles, they have been taken instead to labor in marijuana and poppy fields, sometimes for entire seasons, leaving their families concerned for their safety and often without a source of income.

Ms. Moreno sat on her front stoop playing with her 1-year-old granddaughter, Yasmín, who took a few unsteady steps before turning to smile at her grandmother. She began sewing dresses for Yasmín soon after she was born. It’s important, she said, to pass along the dressmaking tradition to new generations of women. “We want to be seen as Rarámuri,” Ms. Moreno said.

Craft-making and her current job in the workshop are a means for Ms. Moreno to provide her family with the income necessary not only to buy food and pay utilities, but to uphold Rarámuri traditions. Fabric and sewing supplies for a Rarámuri dress can cost upward of 400 pesos, more than some families earn in a month.

There are efforts within the community to help Rarámuri women achieve a sustainable income while keeping their dressmaking tradition alive. In 2015, Paula Holguin, 46, with the support of the state government, began training 30 Rarámuri women to work on sewing machines in a large, spacious workshop inside Oasis. The state government had recently completed construction of the space — a project that aims to give Rarámuri women a chance to earn a living creating commissioned garments.

While Rarámuri men discard their traditional shirt, cloth and sandals upon arrival to the city in order to obtain jobs in construction, Rarámuri women rarely trade their dresses for the uniforms required by employers. “I only wear Rarámuri dresses,” Ms. Holguin said, echoing the thousands of Rarámuri women who strive to keep not only their dress, but their people’s ways of caring for the natural world and one another. To supplement the men’s income, Rarámuri women sell crafts and ask people on the street for “korima” — their word for reciprocity — at busy intersections throughout Chihuahua. But they earn little money this way, and expose themselves and their children to heavy traffic, insults and threats.

Ms. Holguin runs her own sewing workshop, or taller de costura, where she hopes to attract enough clients so that each Rarámuri seamstress can earn money in a safe work space, without sacrificing her traditional dress and time with her children.

Ms. Holguin used to take her daughters to sell crafts, candy, or ask for “korima” on the streets of Chihuahua. “Sometimes I was treated badly,” Ms. Holguin said. “Not everyone is a good person.” An avid runner, as so many Rarámuri are, she displays in her kitchen a dozen medals won in marathons held in the Sierra. (She runs in traditional dress, as well.) Her conviction that Rarámuri women should be proud of their heritage drives her to petition the government for support and rally the women around this new business venture.

But gathering clients has proved to be a challenge. A large project, like the request for 2,000 bedsheets from a nearby hospital, kept the women busy for months at a time. Long spells with little or no work often follow. Low pay, too, keeps women working in the busy city streets. “If there’s work in the workshop, the women don’t go to the street. They sell on the street if they don’t have work,” said Ms. Holguin.

Still, Ms. Holguin was hopeful that the workshop would provide Rarámuri women with the opportunity to attain visibility as seamstresses with varied skills. She travels frequently to Mexico City to speak at government forums about the workshop and the importance of Rarámuri culture.

In 2018, when president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador was visiting Chihuahua to meet with state officials, Ms. Holguin and a small group of Rarámuri women and government officials greeted him on the streets with calls of “AMLO, support Rarámuri seamstresses.” Mr. López Obrador, who was promising to uphold indigenous rights as part of his presidency, ignored throngs of reporters to speak to Ms. Holguin and a few other Rarámuri women about their employment of Rarámuri women as seamstresses. In the end, though, government officials in high offices did not offer the support that Ms. Holguin hoped for. “No one helped us, not the president or the governor. Only clients have helped us,” Ms. Holguin said. She also credits Rarámuri women and the local officials who have supported the workshop. “Together we have lifted up this workshop,” she said.

In the face of historical violence, assimilation might appear to be a path toward economic progress, protection and safety. But to the Rarámuri women, making and wearing traditional dresses is nonnegotiable. Even Rarámuri women brought up under the influence of Chihuahua’s urban culture, and who mix elements of Western dress like metal hoops and plastic necklaces, continue to wear traditional dresses for daily living and special occasions. The dresses are not only a marker of Rarámuri identity, but protest.

“This is how we were born, and this is the way our fathers and mothers dressed us,” Ms. Holguin said. “We haven’t lost our traditions.”

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Thursday, April 29, 2021

Biden to propose free preschool, as speech details emerge (AP) President Joe Biden will call for free preschool for all three- and four-year-old children, a $200 billion investment to be rolled out as part of his sweeping American Families Plan being unveiled Wednesday in an address to Congress. The administration said the historic investment would benefit 5 million children and save the average family $13,000. It calls for providing federal funds to help the states offer preschool, with teachers and other employees earning $15 an hour. The new details are part of Biden’s $1 trillion-plus package, an ambitious next phase of his massive infrastructure investment program, this one focused on so-called human infrastructure—child care, health care, education and other core aspects of the household architecture that undergird everyday life for countless Americans. Together with Biden’s American Jobs Plan, a $2.3 trillion infrastructure investment to be funded by a corporate tax hike, they add up a whopping $4 trillion effort to fulfill his campaign vow to Build Back Better.

Navy SEALs to shift from counterterrorism to global threats (AP) Ten years after they found and killed Osama bin Laden, U.S. Navy SEALs are undergoing a major transition to improve leadership and expand their commando capabilities to better battle threats from global powers like China and Russia. The new plan cuts the number of SEAL platoons by as much as 30% and increases their size to make the teams more lethal and able to counter sophisticated maritime and undersea adversaries. That decision reflects the broader Pentagon strategy to prioritize China and Russia, which are rapidly growing their militaries and trying to expand their influence around the globe. U.S. defense leaders believe that two decades of war against militants and extremists have drained resources, causing America to lose ground against Moscow and Beijing.

Scientist: Extent of DDT dumping in Pacific is ‘staggering’ (AP) Marine scientists say they have found what they believe to be more than 25,000 barrels that possibly contain DDT dumped off the Southern California coast near Catalina Island, where a massive underwater toxic waste site dating back to World War II has long been suspected. The 27,345 “barrel-like” objects were captured in high-resolution images as part of a study by researchers at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. They mapped more than 56 square miles (145 square kilometers) of seafloor between Santa Catalina Island and the Los Angeles coast in a region previously found to contain high levels of the toxic chemical in sediments and in the ecosystem. Historical shipping logs show that industrial companies in Southern California used the basin as a dumping ground until 1972, when the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act, also known as the Ocean Dumping Act, was enacted. Disposing of industrial, military, nuclear and other hazardous waste was a pervasive global practice in the 20th century, according to researchers. The long-term impact on marine life and humans is still unknown, said Scripps chemical oceanographer and professor of geosciences Lihini Aluwihare, who in 2015 co-authored a study that found high amounts of DDT and other man-made chemicals in the blubber of bottlenose dolphins that died of natural causes.

Electric Vehicle Appeal Loses Steam (Nature.com/ArsTechnica) California is the largest market in the US for plug-in vehicles. But a new study in Nature Energy has found that about 20% of those early electric vehicle adopters have given up their EVs to return to fossil fuel-powered transport. Survey responders said what they liked most about their plug-ins were recharging costs, reliability, and safety. What they liked least were the driving range and convenience of charging. Not surprisingly, those who decided to keep their EVS had more access to level 2 charging (240 V AC) at home, as well as more access to charging generally.

The real crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border (Washington Post) There’s a crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border, but it isn’t the crisis that the media has been covering and that the Republican governors of Arizona and Texas recently blamed on President Biden. The crisis I’m talking about is the one that is eroding the livelihoods of U.S. citizens on the borderlands. Just ask Blanca Gallardo, 45, or her colleague Ivan Caballero, 39, two of the three workers left at La Familia, a mega-discount store in the border city of Nogales, Ariz. The store once employed 24 people. La Familia occupies a prime piece of real estate on Morley Avenue, Nogales’s Main Street. Like other retail businesses on and around this thoroughfare, La Familia depends almost entirely on shoppers who live on the other side of the border fence a short walk away—Mexicans who have not been allowed to enter the United States since March last year, when land ports of entry were closed to visa-carrying nonessential travelers in an effort to contain the coronavirus pandemic. The result has been devastating. Sheriff David Hathaway, a lifelong Nogales resident and the top law enforcement official in Santa Cruz County, one of four border counties in Arizona, said that 90 percent of local businesses have shut their doors and may never reopen. “There is no migrant crisis,” Hathaway told me. “What we have is a big economic crisis.” That’s not just a Nogales problem, though. One downtown merchant in the border city of El Paso told Border Report in November that his store had lost as much as 90 percent of its customers since last March.

López Obrador’s bid to alter Mexican Supreme Court seen as threat to judicial independence (Washington Post) He won the presidency in a landslide. His party dominates Congress. Now, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is in a battle over the country’s judiciary, as opponents and legal analysts accuse him of making an unconstitutional power grab. Lawmakers from López Obrador’s party have triggered outrage by voting to add two years to the four-year term of the Supreme Court chief justice, Arturo Zaldívar. Zaldívar is generally regarded as sympathetic to the president. As in the United States, where some Democrats want to expand the U.S. Supreme Court, there are fears that the judiciary is becoming increasingly politicized. But the Mexican measure carries especially grave implications, analysts say, because it appears to violate a constitutional limit on the chief justice’s term. López Obrador is increasingly challenging institutions created as part of Mexico’s transition to democracy, including the national elections board and the freedom-of-information institute. Critics worry that the president, who came to power as a leftist political outsider, could use his popularity to reestablish elements of the one-party system that reigned here for seven decades.

With pools closed, Peruvians turn to open-water swimming (AP) The swimmers began gathering even before dawn glimmers on Pescadores beach, plunging into the Pacific surf for one of the few athletic endeavors permitted under Peru’s strict pandemic restrictions. Swimming pools have been closed for more than a year, but government has since Oct. 30 allowed open-water swimming, even if relaxing on the beach is banned to prevent mass gatherings. Forty-three-year-old Lorena Choy said swimming “relaxes me, unstresses me. ... It helps a lot psychologically.” Swimming coach Víctor Solís, 47, said he estimated that the number of swimmers out each morning has multiplied fivefold recently.

UK to come under scrutiny in Italy’s largest mafia trial in decades (The Guardian) In a high-security, 1,000-capacity courtroom converted from a call centre, Italy’s largest mafia trial in three decades is under way in Lamezia Terme, Calabria. About 900 witnesses are set to testify against more than 350 defendants, including politicians and officials charged with being members of the ‘Ndrangheta, Italy’s most powerful criminal group. Several of the defendants will be asked to respond to charges of money laundering over establishing companies in the UK with the alleged purpose of simulating legitimate economic activity. The ‘Ndrangheta—based in the southern region of Calabria, the toe of the Italian boot—is reputed to be one of the richest and most feared criminal organisations in the world. A study by the Demoskopita Research Institute in 2013 estimated its financial strength as more than that of Deutsche Bank and McDonald’s combined, with an annual turnover of €53bn (£44bn). Investigators say the secret of its success lies in its ability to connect the underworld with the upper world, where often the “upper world” stands for London. In the last decade, hundreds of investigations have asserted how the ‘Ndrangheta has laundered billions of euros in the City.

The U.S. Built the Afghan Military Over 20 Years. Will It Last One More? (NYT) President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that first propelled the United States into conflict, has prompted deep fears about the Afghan security forces’ ability to defend what territory remains under government control. For nearly two decades, the United States and NATO have engaged in the nation-building pursuit of training, expanding and equipping Afghanistan’s police, army and air forces, spending tens of billions of dollars in an attempt to build government security forces that can safeguard their own country. But despite this enormous effort, the undertaking has only produced a troubled set of forces that are woefully unprepared for facing the Taliban, or any other threat, on their own. What comes next is anything but certain. The Taliban already control vast amounts of the country, even with American military power present. Afghan units are rife with corruption, have lost track of the weapons once showered on them by the Pentagon, and in many areas are under constant attack. Some soldiers have not been home in years because their villages have been overtaken by the Taliban. Prospects for improvement are slim, given slumping recruitment, high casualty rates and a Taliban insurgency that is savvy, experienced and well equipped—including with weapons originally provided to the Afghan government by the United States.

In India, Illness Is Everywhere (NYT) Crematories are so full of bodies, it’s as if a war just happened. Sickness and death are everywhere. Dozens of houses in my neighborhood have sick people. One of my son’s teachers is sick. The neighbor two doors down, to the right of us: sick. Two doors to the left: sick. I’m sitting in my apartment waiting to catch the disease. That’s what it feels like right now in New Delhi with the world’s worst coronavirus crisis advancing around us. India is now recording more infections per day—as many as 350,000—than any other country has since the pandemic began, and that’s just the official number, which most experts think is a vast underestimation. New Delhi, India’s sprawling capital of 20 million, is suffering a calamitous surge. A few days ago, the positivity rate hit a staggering 36 percent—meaning more than one out of three people tested were infected. A month ago, it was less than 3 percent. The infections have spread so fast that hospitals have been completely swamped. Although New Delhi is locked down, the disease is still rampaging.

US Navy fires warning shots in new tense encounter with Iran (AP) An American warship fired warning shots when vessels of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard came too close to a patrol in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy said Wednesday. The Navy said the USS Firebolt fired the warning shots after three fast-attack Guard vessels came within 68 yards (62 meters) of it and the U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat USCGC Baranoff. The incident Monday marked the second time the Navy accused the Guard of operating in an “unsafe and unprofessional” manner this month alone after tense encounters between the forces had dropped in recent years.

Hong Kong passes immigration bill, raising alarm over ‘exit bans’ (Reuters) Hong Kong’s legislature passed on Wednesday a controversial immigration bill, which lawyers, diplomats and right groups fear will give authorities unlimited powers to prevent residents and others from entering or leaving the Chinese-ruled city. The government has dismissed those fears as “complete nonsense,” saying the legislation, which will come into effect on Aug. 1, merely aims to screen illegal immigrants. The assurances, however, come in a climate of mistrust after the increasingly authoritarian path officials have taken the imposition of a sweeping national security law by Beijing last year. Lawyers say the new law will empower authorities to bar anyone, without a court order, from entering or leaving Hong Kong—essentially opening the door for mainland China-style exit bans—and fails to prevent indefinite detention for refugees. The Hong Kong Bar Association (HKBA) said in February the bill failed to explain why such powers were necessary, how they would be used and provided no limit on the duration of any travel ban, nor any safeguards against abuse.

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Venezuela – Another Failed Coup Attempt – What’s Next?

by Peter Koenig  for The Saker Blog

In the early morning hours of 30 April, 2019, the self-declare “Interim President”, Juan Guaidó, launched what at first sight appeared to be a military coup – Guaidó calls it “Operation Freedom” (sounds very much like a Washington-invented title) – against the democratically elected, legitimate government of Nicolas Maduro. With two dozen of defected armed military from the Carlota military base east of Caracas (not hundreds, or even thousands, as reported by the mainstream media), Guaidó went to free Leopoldo Lopez, the opposition leader, who was under house arrest, after his 13-year prison sentence for his role in the deadly 2014 anti-government protests, was commuted. They first called for a full military insurrection – which failed bitterly, as the vast majority of the armed forces are backing President Maduro and his government.

As reported straight from Caracas by geopolitical analyst, Dario Azzelli, Guaidó and López rallied from the Plaza Altamira, for the people of Venezuela to rise up and take to the streets to oust President Maduro. According to them, this was the ‘last phase’ of a peaceful coup to bring freedom and democracy back to Venezuela. The nefarious pair issued a video of their “battle cry” which they broadcast over the social media.

They mobilized a few hundred – again not thousands as pers SMS – right-wing middle to upper class protestors and marched towards the Presidential Palace. On the way, they were confronted by the Venezuelan Civil Guard with tear gas – not even the military had to intervene – and only few protestors reached Miraflores which was protectively surrounded by thousands of Chavistas. And that was basically the end of yet another failed coup.

Leopoldo López was seeking asylum in the Chilean Embassy which rejected him, and now, it looks like he found his refuge in the Spanish Embassy. This is a huge embarrassment and outright shame for Spain, especially after the Socialist Party, PSOE, just won the elections with 29%, though not enough to form a government by its own, but largely sufficient to call the shots as to whom should be granted asylum on their territory. Looks like fascism is still alive in Spain, if Pedro Sanchez is not able to reject a right-wing fascist opposition and illegal coup leader of Venezuela to gain refuge on Spain’s territory.

As to Guaidó, rumors have it that he found refuge in the Brazilian Embassy, though some reports say he is being protected by his Colombian friends. Both is possible, Bolsonaro and Duque are of same fascist kind, certainly ready to grant criminals – what Guaidó is – asylum. ——

What is important to know, though, is that throughout the day of the attempted coup, 30 April, the US State Department, in the person of the pompous Pompeo, accompanied by the National Security Advisor, John Bolton, kept threatening President Maduro in a press round. Pompeo directly menaced President Maduro, saying – “If they ask me if the US is prepared to consider military action [in Venezuela], if this is what is necessary to restore democracy in Venezuela, the President [Donald Trump] has been coherent and clear: The military option is available, if this is what we have to do.” – These threats are repeated throughout May 1 – day after the Venezuelan attempted coup defeat by both Pompeo and warrior Bolton.

Pompeo’s audacity didn’t stop there. He went as far as suggesting to President Maduro to flee to Cuba and leave his country to those that will bring back (sic) freedom and democracy.

Let’s be clear. Although this has been said before – it cannot be repeated enough for the world to understand. These outright war criminals in Washington are in flagrant violation of the UN Charter to which the US is – for good or for bad – a signatory.

UN Charter – Chapter I, Article 2 (4), says: All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

We know that the White House, Pentagon and State Department have zero respect for the UN, and, in fact, use the international body for their purposes, manipulating and blackmailing its members into doing the bidding for the US. That is all known and has been documented. What is perhaps newer is that this is now happening, especially in the cases of Venezuela and Iran, openly, in unveiled flagrant disrespect of any international law, against bodies and sovereign countries that do not bend to the whims and will of the United States.

As a result of this open violation of the UN Charter by the world’s only rogue state, some 60 UN member nations, including Russia and China, have formed a solid shield against Washington’s aggressions. The group was created especially in defense of Venezuela, but is also there for Iran and other countries being aggressed and threatened by the US. Hence, the blatant blackmailing and manipulation of weaker UN member countries becomes more difficult.

To be sure, the Russian Foreign Ministry has immediately condemned the coup as illegal and warned the US of any military intervention. This is of course not the first time, but just to be sure – Russia is there, standing by her partner and friend, Venezuela.

——

This Guaidó–Lopez attempted coup was most certainly following instructions from Washington. Super-puppet Guaidó, US-groomed and trained, then self-declared “presidente interino”, would not dare doing anything on his own initiative which might raise the wrath of his masters. But would the US – with all her secret services capacity – seriously launch a coup so ill-prepared that it is defeated in just a few hours with minimal intervention of Venezuelan forces? – I doubt it.

What is it then, other than a planned failure? – A new propaganda instrument, for the corporate MSM to run amok and tell all kinds of lies, convincing its complacent western public of the atrocities produced by the Maduro regime, the misery Venezuelan people must live, famine, disease without medication, oppression by dictatorship, torture, murder – whatever they can come up with. You meet any mainstream-groomed people in Europe and elsewhere, even well-educated people, people who call themselves ‘socialists’ and are leading figures in European socialist parties, they would tell you these same lies about misery caused by the Maduro regime.

How could that be – if the Maduro Government doesn’t even arrest Juan Guaidó for his multiple crimes committed since January, when he self-proclaimed being the ‘interim president’ of Venezuela. Arresting him, for the coup attempts he initiated or was party to since his auto coronation to president. That’s what a dictator would do. That’s what the United States of America, would have done a long time ago. Washington and its internal security apparatus would certainly not tolerate such illegal acts – and to top it off – foreign manipulated political illegality.

Why for example, would the media not point out the real crimes of the US vassals of South America, like Colombia, where over 6 million people are internal and external refugees, where at least 240,000 peasants and human rights activists were massacred and many were burned by US-funded paramilitary groups, atrocities that are ongoing as of this day, despite the November 2016 signed “Peace Agreement” between the then Santos Government and the FARC – for which President Manuel Santos received the Nobel Peace Prize. – Can you imagine!

What world are we living in? A world of everyday deceit and lies and highly paid lie-propaganda, paid with fake money – fake as in indiscriminately printed US-dollars – of which every new dollar is debt that will never be paid back (as openly admitted by former FEDs Chairman, Alan Greenspan); dollars that can be indiscriminately spent to produce the deadliest weapons, as well as for corporate media-propaganda lies – also a deadly weapon – to indoctrinate people around the globe into believing that evil is good, and that war is peace.

I have lost many friends by telling them off, by telling them the truth, the truth about Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria – mostly to no avail. It’s actually no loss; it’s merely a repeated confirmation of how far the western society has been veered off the path of conscience into a comfort zone, where believing the propaganda lies of reputed media like The Guardian, NYT, WashPost, BBC, FAZ, Spiegel, Le Monde, Figaro, el País, ABC — and so on, is edifying. They are so convincing. They are so well-reputed and well-known. How could they lie? – No loss, indeed.

Let’s stay on track, comrades. Venceremos!

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

[garkomedia1]

How the U.S. and U.K. are partners in chaos

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HOW THE U.K. AND THE U.S. ARE PARTNERS IN CHAOS — A little thought bubble as we head into the weekend and the short Thanksgiving week. MM spent some time over the last several days in Washington and New York with a variety of executives who are sifting through the 2018 midterm election results and trying to make some sense of the path of U.S. politics.

Many are trying to figure out where America is headed with a growing schism between a metro-area dominated, more highly educated electorate trending toward the Democrats and smaller town and rural voters sticking with President Donald Trump and the GOP and embracing the president’s hardline trade and immigration policies and his culture war appeals.

Consensus among these executives (and frankly among anyone else) is that American politics is a directionless wreck with no path forward on anything from health care to education to retirement savings to climate change and gun violence and long-term fiscal deficits. One British banker mused about how he’s never seen the U.S. so screwed up or derelict on the world stage.

Then he stopped himself almost immediately to say how the U.K. was really wasn’t any better with no consensus on how to deal with Brexit, a potential end to Prime Minister Theresa May’s tenure, a civil war inside the Conservative party and a plunging pound. It remains largely unclear in the U.K. whether May’s softer Brexit plan will somehow survive or no deal will emerge leading to a hard Brexit or a new referendum will take place to reverse Brexit entirely.

Tensions in the U.S. and U.K. are different in many ways but they share commonalities of fractured politics and deep divisions on fundamental identities as either insular and nationalistic or more globally integrated and diverse. We got no revelatory insight in these conversations beyond a morbid sense that only grave and immediate crisis that cannot be ignored will jolt either nation into clarity. And maybe not even then. Happy thoughts for your Friday!

SPEAKING OF THE TWO AMERICAS… CNBC’s John Harwood writes on data compiled by Brookings’ Mark Munro that show that “districts won by Democrats account for 61 percent of America’s gross domestic product, districts won by Republicans 38 percent. That economic separation underpins cultural divisions that usually command more attention. … Residents of districts won by Democrats generate 22% more output per worker, and have a 15% higher median household income.” Read more.

** A message from The National Association of Manufacturers and U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Proxy advisory firms—secretive companies most Americans have never heard of—are putting Americans’ retirement savings at risk. These firms can give inaccurate, conflict-ridden and sometimes politically motivated recommendations that jeopardize Americans’ retirement savings. Learn More: https://proxyreforms.com/ **

MORE WILBUR ROSS DRAMA — POLITICO’s Nancy Cook and Andrew Restuccia with the details: “To hear Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and his allies tell it, rumors of his demise have been greatly exaggerated. Administration officials and close White House advisers say the 80-year-old Ross could be out of a job in a broader Cabinet shakeup as soon as January or as late as mid-2019. Ross, long said to be on thin ice with President Donald Trump, denies either scenario. ‘I’ll serve as long as the president wants and I have no indication to the contrary,’ he told an audience at a Yahoo! Finance event on Nov. 13.

“But in a sign of Ross’s perceived weakness, at least one influential Trump ally has begun speaking openly about his desire for the Commerce job if and when it becomes vacant: Office of Management and Budget chief Mick Mulvaney. …

“Other names circulating for the top Commerce slot include Small Business Administration Administrator Linda McMahon; Ray Washburne, a major Republican donor and the President and CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation; and Karen Dunn Kelly, undersecretary for economic affairs at Commerce, who is jockeying for the job internally at the department.” Read more.

Restuccia (@AndrewRestuccia) also tweeted that McMahon would meet with Trump in the Oval on Friday.

GOP INVESTORS MORE BULLISH POST MIDTERMS — Somewhat counter-intuitive findings in this E-Trade survey of investors after midterm elections in which Democrats took back the House: “Republicans skew more bullish … with 38% saying they are more bullish toward the market than they were before the election. Democrats are slightly less optimistic, with 33% expressing more bullishness.

“Yet Republicans are also less positive about the personal impact of the results: Republicans are significantly more pessimistic across every measure tested, including how the new Congress will impact their investing portfolio, taxes, savings and bond yields, inflation, debt interest, and cost of goods and services.” Read more.

FIRST LOOK: ABA ON THE CRA — The ABA has a new comment letter out this morning to the OCC in response to its request for ideas to change the Community Reinvestment Act. From the comment: “Regulators should revise the CRA framework to incorporate fully the electronic channels through which many consumers prefer to conduct financial transactions. In addition, amendments to the CRA regulations must reflect that banks of all sizes are no longer restricted to conducting business in a limited geographic location.

WARNINGS SIGNS IN RETAIL SALES? — Pantheon’s Ian Shepherdson: “The headline retail sales numbers for October looked good, but the details were less comforting. Gains in auto sales, building materials—due to the hurricanes, likely— and higher gasoline prices cannot be the foundation of solid broad growth, and the core numbers were rather weaker.

“The key message from the recent data, in our view, is that the impact of the tax cuts, which pushed sales up sharply in the spring, is fading rapidly. Our measure of core retail sales, which excludes autos, gasoline and food, rose at a mere 2.7% annualized rate in the three months to October, slowing from the 9.9% peak in the three months to July.”

TRANSITIONS— Jacqueline Corba, a POLITICO alum, has joined CNBC’s Squawk Box team as anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin’s producer. She was previously Senior Producer of special programming at Cheddar. Good get!

DEMS FLOAT POTENTIALLY BIG RULE CHANGES — Washington Examiner’s Colin Wilhelm and Laura Barrón-López on new proposed rules changes drafted by Democrats in the House: “One change would require a three-fifths majority to raise taxes on individuals outside the top 20 percent of income earners.

“The draft rules would also eliminate dynamic budgetary scoring, which takes economic growth under consideration when determining the cost of legislation in federal spending. … If agreed upon by a majority of members in the House, the new rules would also effectively do away with standalone debt ceiling votes in the chamber, reinstating a rule that deems the debt ceiling raised if a budget is passed.” Read more.

MUELLER ANXIETY GRIPS THE WHITE HOUSE — Good read from POLITICO’s Darren Samuelsohn: “Lawyers for President Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. insist they aren’t worried about special counsel Robert Mueller. But half a dozen people in contact with the White House and other Trump officials say a deep anxiety has started to set in that Mueller is about to pounce after his self-imposed quiet period, and that any number of Trump’s allies and family members may soon be staring down the barrel of an indictment.

“Then there are the president’s own tweets, which have turned back to attacking Mueller after a near two-month break. … ‘You can see it in Trump’s body language all week long. There’s something troubling him. It’s not just a couple staff screw ups with Melania,’ said a senior Republican official in touch with the White House. ‘It led me to believe the walls are closing in and they’ve been notified by counsel of some actions about to happen. Folks are preparing for the worst.’” Read more.

GOOD FRIDAY MORNING — Happy weekend everyone! Next week is Thanksgiving. Thank God. Email me at bwhite@politico.com and follow me on Twitter @morningmoneyben. Email Aubree Eliza Weaver at aweaver@politico.com and follow her on Twitter @AubreeEWeaver..

DRIVING THE DAY — President Trump at 1:00 p.m. awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to several recipients including Miriam Edelson, wife of billionaire GOP donor Sheldon Adelson … Industrial production at 9:15 a.m. expected to rise 0.2 percent with manufacturing up 0.3 percent …

BOWMAN CONFIRMED; WHAT ABOUT NELLIE LIANG? — POLITICO’s Victoria Guida: “The Senate in a 64-34 vote … confirmed Kansas State Banking Commissioner Michelle Bowman as a member of the Federal Reserve Board, the culmination of a yearslong push by community bankers to guarantee that someone who shares their experience sits at the central bank.

“Bowman, nominated in April, is the first person confirmed to the Fed seat reserved for a community banker, a position created in 2015. The seven-member Fed board now has five members, after dwindling to as low as three over the past year. The Fed’s newest governor has served as Kansas’ top bank regulator since Jan. 31, 2017.” Read more.

Trump now has two more Fed nominees awaiting Senate votes, Marvin Goodfriend and Nellie Liang, a long-time Fed staff member who played a critical role during the financial crisis. The White House continues to telegraph confidence that they can get Liang through the Senate Banking Committee and to the floor for a vote.

But banking groups and some Senate Banking members including Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have expressed significant opposition and suggested Liang could interfere with efforts to reduce regulatory burdens on large financial institutions. So far, GOP Senate leadership has mostly stayed out of it, waiting to see what happens at the committee level.

FED UNVEILS COMMUNICATION REFORM PLAN — POLITICO’s Zachary Warmbrodt: “The Federal Reserve … unveiled plans for a review of the way it conducts monetary policy. The review the Fed has mapped out for next year will include outreach to the public, including a June 4-5 research conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the central bank said. Federal Reserve Banks will host a series of public events around the country to get input, the Fed said.

“Beginning around the middle of next year, Fed policymakers will discuss the feedback received from the events. ‘With labor market conditions close to maximum employment and inflation near our 2 percent objective, now is a good time to take stock of how we formulate, conduct, and communicate monetary policy,’ Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in a statement.” Read more.

QUARLES, TAKE TWO — Cap Alpha’s Ian Katz: “Fed regulatory czar Randy Quarles put in his second consecutive day of congressional testimony on Thursday. This one before the Senate Banking Committee was barely an hour … Overall, the message was again broadly positive for banks.

“He tried to convince Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that the Fed is carefully monitoring leveraged lending, and contested assertions from Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) that he’s making the stress tests too easy.”

TECH, BANKS LEAD STOCK REBOUND — AP’s Alex Veiga: “A rebound in technology companies and banks helped reverse an early slide for U.S. stocks Thursday, breaking a five-day losing streak for the market.

“Health care and industrial stocks also rose, offsetting losses in retailers, homebuilders, utilities and other sectors. Energy stocks also helped lift the market as the price of U.S. crude oil rose for the second straight day. … The late-afternoon market rebound marked the latest episode of volatile trading for the market this week.” Read more.

POUND SLIDES AMID BREXIT TURMOIL — NYT’s Peter Eavis: “Big declines in Britain’s currency, the pound, often have signaled wrenching changes for the country. Could this be the case again as … May struggles to win support for her plan to take Britain out of the European Union?

“The British pound on Thursday fell 2 percent against the dollar. That’s a large decline for a currency belonging to a developed economy and is the biggest one-day drop since the weeks after Britain’s vote in June 2016 to leave the European Union … Though the pound is down 15 percent since that vote, it remains well above the lows it hit in January 2017, when it was becoming clear that Mrs. May’s government favored a more drastic separation from important economic arrangements with the European Union.” Read more.

ECONOMISTS SPLIT ON MIDTERMS OUTCOME — WSJ’s Harriet Torry: “Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal were roughly split on whether the outcome of the recent midterm elections would dispel or increase uncertainty for the economy and financial markets in the coming months. The vote means that come January, Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives, while Republicans will retain control of the U.S. Senate.

“Nearly half of respondents in the economists’ survey, 46 percent, said economic uncertainty would increase somewhat following the midterms, while 40 percent of respondents expected it would decline somewhat after the vote.” Read more.

HOUSE PANEL TO LOOK AT FINANCE SECTOR DIVERSITY — Reuters’ Pete Schroeder: “Democrats are planning to dramatically step up their focus on improving financial services for underserved communities when they take control of the U.S. House of Representatives in January, according to several people briefed on the matter.

“Representative Maxine Waters, who is poised to take over the chair of the Financial Services Committee after Democrats won a majority in the House in Nov. 6 elections, is considering creating a subcommittee dedicated to financial inclusion and diversity in the sector, as well as a taskforce to focus on financial technology innovation, the people said. Waters had previously said the issue would be a priority.” Read more.

GOLDMAN CEO ‘PERSONALLY OUTRAGED’ BY 1MDB SCANDAL — Bloomberg’s Keith Campbell and Jennifer Surane: “David Solomon had a message for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. employees shaken by the firm’s involvement in a multibillion fraud scandal: This isn’t us.

“‘I am personally outraged that any employee of the firm would undertake the actions spelled out in the government’s pleadings,’ the firm’s chief executive officer said in a voicemail left with employees on Wednesday. ‘The behavior of those individuals is reprehensible and inconsistent with the good work and integrity that defines work that 40,000 of you do every day.’” Read more.

CREDIT UNIONS HAVE MORE WOMEN CEOs — Per new research from economists at the Credit Union National Association (CUNA): “In the financial sector where females are significantly underrepresented in management positions, credit unions create and sustain opportunities for female leaders to serve their communities.

“We measured credit union success in three key categories, and here’s what we found: Female executives are significantly more common at credit unions compared to other financial institutions: A majority (52%) of credit union CEOs are female. Accounting for differences in asset size, there is no evidence for a gender pay gap at credit unions” Read more.

ANOTHER DEM PICKUP IN THE HOUSE — POLITICO’s Elena Schneider: “Democrat Jared Golden has defeated GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin in Maine’s 2nd District, bringing Democrats’ net gain in the House to 36 seats with five GOP seats still uncalled — and with Poliquin still embroiled in a lawsuit against Maine’s secretary of state over the vote.

“Golden had 50.5 percent of the vote to Poliquin’s 49.5 percent, according to the Maine secretary of state’s office. Golden’s victory — the first House race ever decided by a ranked-choice voting system — also marked the 20th district that Democrats won that had been carried by … Trump in 2016.” Read more.

AND ONE MORE… POLITICO’s Brent D. Griffiths: “Southern California Rep. Mimi Walters was ousted Thursday night, the latest House Republican to lose their seat in the formerly deep-red Orange County. The Associated Press called the 45th congressional district race with Democrat Katie Porter leading Walters, a two-term incumbent who previously served in the California senate, by just over 6,000 votes as ballots continue to be counted.” Read more.

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That leads to bad decisions that can undermine company performance and drag down retirement account balances for American workers. Thankfully, the Securities and Exchange Commission is exploring ways to provide much-needed oversight. And Main Street investors can take action by telling Washington to look out for working Americans and their savings. Learn more: https://proxyreforms.com/ **

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[theconservativebrief]

Ever since the 2016 election, Democrats have been having the same debate: Should their messaging be centered on race or class?

These themes appear in virtually every Democratic campaign speech, and for good reason: Somewhere in the murky overlap between race and class is a winning formula for the 2018 midterms, and perhaps even the 2020 presidential election.

But is there really such a divide between a race-based message and a class-focused one? A new study from a moderate Democratic think tank suggests that the choice, as it’s being framed by Democratic hopefuls, may be a false one — that an economic appeal may in fact be the most effective way to get nonwhite voters to the polls, in addition to the broader Democratic electorate.

It’s a view that goes against the drift of current Democratic debates. At this year’s Netroots Nation conference, New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a rising star on the left, said the swing voter Democrats need to win isn’t “red to blue. It’s nonvoter to voter.” In other words, Democrats can win by turning out reliable Democratic voters — black and Hispanic people — who turned out at lower rates in 2016.

But in saying the key to victory isn’t “red to blue,” Ocasio-Cortez is also refuting the recurring idea that Democrats haven’t paid enough attention to white working-class voters (or “populist” voters, as one comprehensive study of the electorate put it) who voted for Barack Obama in 2012, only to switch to Donald Trump in 2016.

The midterm elections are seven weeks away, and there’s about an 80 percent chance Democrats will take back the House with both establishment and progressive candidates coalescing around a more left-leaning message.

But if they fail to take back the House, this debate over what course Democrats should take — win back the white working class or focus on turning out voters of color — is sure to flare up anew. And it could shape the type of candidate Democrats nominate in 2020.

That’s why a new county-level data analysis from Third Way, the preeminent moderate Democratic think tank, is so intriguing. The organization’s data analysis, which it shared with Vox, tries to untangle some of the big factors in the 2016 election, especially the role played by nonwhite and white working-class voters.

The data shows that there are many reasons progressive Democrats like Ocasio-Cortez are right: Democrats can close some of the margin with Republicans by turning out more people of color, especially those who are facing economic adversity. But how do you tweak the dials to optimize support for your candidacy in a nation that is both highly segregated by race and highly sensitive to racialized messaging? In other words, how do you ramp up support among voters of color without turning off white working-class voters — and vice versa?

Third Way’s study looks at some key factors that affected the 2016 election and then uses regression analysis to figure out how much of an effect each of these factors had, independent of each other.

The method is actually pretty simple: Imagine there’s a machine that looks at key demographic statistics of every US county and then guesses how each county voted in the 2016 election.

This machine has knobs that let you change how much you think each demographic attribute mattered. So you can turn up some knobs while turning down others, and then run the machine to see how it does.

The Third Way study essentially found the knob settings that best predicted the actual 2016 election results for nearly every county. (It left out counties with fewer than 10,000 voters, as well as Alaska and North Dakota, which don’t aggregate voters by county.)

So which knobs were turned up the highest when the model is closest to the actual results? In other words, what was the strongest predictor of whether a county would support Hillary Clinton or Trump?

The answer: the percentage of nonwhite voters in a county.

”Nonwhite voter influence was so much more impactful than I thought it was going to be,” Third Way’s Lanae Erickson Hatalsky told me. “We’ve written a lot of things in the past about how demography isn’t destiny, and we still believe that. But it wasn’t just nonwhite voters that voted for Hillary; it was everyone who lived in those areas.”

Meanwhile, the percentage of white working-class voters was a poor predictor of how a county voted. Yes, these counties tended to vote for Trump, but the effect was minimal.

This means focusing on the white working class “takes us in the wrong direction,” Erickson Hatalsky said.

This shouldn’t be hugely surprising. The white working-class theory assumes there are economic reasons voters leaned toward Trump. But research now hints that racial resentment activated this economic anxiety. Not only that, but the poor white working class was actually more likely to support Clinton than Trump.

But even if race was the biggest factor in the 2016 election results, Third Way argues that it doesn’t automatically mean race should be the thrust of Democrats’ message.

Erickson Hatalsky points out that racially diverse counties tend to be concentrated near cities and on the coasts. In order to win nationwide election, you need to have a message for both white and nonwhite voters, especially since those voters’ racial identity isn’t necessarily their only identity.

So what does Third Way believe that message should be?

”It’s about having an economic message that appeals to all people, including people of color,” Erickson Hatalsky said.

The think tank is especially interested in a metric called “economic sensitivity,” which tries to capture how much financial uncertainty or stress someone perceives by asking questions like, “How easily can you handle an unexpected expense?”

This metric was developed by the political data firm Catalist. The idea is that when you vote, it doesn’t matter whether other people think you’re financially comfortable; what matters is the pressure you feel.

And in its analysis, Third Way found that the proportion of people in a county who were economically sensitive was a very good predictor of how a county voted in 2016 — almost as good a predictor as the proportion of nonwhite people in a county.

And it’s not just that financially sensitive people voted for Trump; rather, it’s that financially sensitive people are less likely to turn out. These nonvoters are disproportionately people of color, who tend to vote Democrat.

In 2008 and 2012, black and Hispanic voters turned out at record rates. In 2016, those numbers regressed — and progressive Democrats have looked at that gap as a possible place where they can make up ground.

Erickson Hatalsky argues that it’s not reasonable to expect those voters to turn out at Obama-era rates. “We’re comparing numbers not to [the] last time Democrats won but [to] the first-ever African-American president,” she said.

So Third Way Democrats argue that the way to reach those nonvoters — which includes white voters — is with a message centered more on economics and less explicitly on racial identity.

”People think nonwhite voters want some whole different thing that isn’t about economics,” Erickson Hatalsky said. “But they want the same thing everyone else does.”

Political strategists often talk about the “story” they want to tell the American people, and they do a lot of testing to see how popular these stories are.

Third Way’s research is a bit of a Rorschach test in that you can affirm your preferred story in the data.

Third Way and many of their fellow centrist Democrats believe the story Democrats tell in 2018 and 2020 should be rooted in economic opportunity — something they feel Democrats didn’t articulate enough in 2016. They argue that this is how Democrats win over voters with various overlapping identities.

But Demos, another liberal think tank, sees things differently. Recent research by the group finds support for putting more of the emphasis on race.

”The reason progressives cannot win on anything that requires government is because government has been racialized and demonized,” UC Berkeley law professor Ian Haney López, who worked with Demos on their research, said at a Netroots Nation talk. “That’s what Trump’s doing. Whatever issue you care about, you gotta come to the table to figure out how you’re going to defeat racialized dog-whistling in order to build public confidence in government.”

When Demos tested progressive economic messages, the think tank saw bigger gains among both the Democratic base and persuadable voters when the messages made explicit reference to race, including white people.

And these gains weren’t just with people of color but with white people as well.

”Some people say, ‘You’re only trying to get black and brown folks,’” said Causten Rodriguez-Wollerman of Demos. “But guess what: White folks like this. And people of color like this even more.”

Rodriguez-Wollerman said that for decades, Republicans have dominated the storytelling around race and have elegantly married it with an economics narrative. For example, they’ve managed to tie the story of unemployment to illegal immigration. This, he says, is why Democrats need to tell a race-forward story of their own.

These stories — Third Way’s and Demos’s — aren’t necessarily at odds with each other. An economic message can be race-conscious, and race-forward messages can be based in economics.

The 2018 midterms will be the first signal to Democrats on whether they’ve struck the right balance on this race-versus-class front — and whether they’ve built a tent big and stable enough to win the 2020 election.

If it turns out they haven’t, the tent may start to fray.

Original Source -> Race was the biggest factor in 2016 — but economics is still Democrats’ winning message

via The Conservative Brief

[politicoscope]

Juan Guaido Biography and Profile

New Post has been published on https://www.politicoscope.com/juan-guaido-biography-and-profile/

Juan Guaido Biography and Profile

Juan Guaido (Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez) was born on 28 July 1983, one of seven children in the port city of La Guaira in the state of Vargas. Guaido and his family survived a catastrophic mudslide in 1999 that killed thousands of people and destroyed thousands of homes in La Guaira.

“Seeing your daily life wiped out from one day to the next forced us to detach ourselves from material things, but brought us closer,” Juan Guaidó told the newspaper El Nacional.

Juan Gerardo Guaido Marquez, an industrial engineer by training, began organizing demonstrations against Hugo Chavez more than a decade ago after the late leader silenced critics by refusing to renew the broadcast license of Venezuela’s most popular television channel. Guaido formed a close relationship with Leopoldo Lopez and helped the former Caracas mayor establish the Popular Will party. Even with Lopez under house arrest, they talk several times a day.

He joined the National Assembly in 2011, serving as an alternate until he was elected in 2016 as representative for the state of Vargas — a position that he currently holds. He was among several lawmakers who went on a hunger strike demanding parliamentary elections in 2015. He was a relative unknown until he was chosen to lead Venezuela’s legislative body. Guaido was briefly detained by Venezuelan government operatives on the way to a political rally, days after he said he was ready to replace Maduro. As a legislator, he visited a disputed zone between Venezuela and Guyana that dates back to 1966. He also took part in the hunger strike to pressure the National Electoral Council (CNE), which was controlled by Chávez loyalists, to set a date for the parliamentary elections that the opposition eventually won on Dec. 6, 2015.

Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez Full Biography and Profile Juan Gerardo Guaido Marquez’s partner is Fabiana Rosales, a fellow student leader. Their daughter, Miranda, named after a forerunner to South American independence hero Simon Bolivar, was born amid the 2017 wave of protests, during which her father was hit in the neck by plastic buckshot and broke his hand in clashes with police.

Guaido’s party, Voluntad Popular (Popular Will or Will of the People) is a centrist social-democratic party. It holds just 14 of the national assembly’s 167 seats, but is a member of the Democratic Unity Roundtable coalition, which holds a super majority in the assembly.

According to the party’s website, its origins date back to 2004. It was formed to “promote social action and social leadership,” and it was officially recognized as a party in 2011.

Its manifesto states that it seeks to “bring together Venezuelans to work toward peace, freedom and democracy” and to “build a more secure, united and prosperous country where everyone will be entitled to all rights.”

The party was co-founded and is currently led by Leopoldo Lopez, a well-known political prisoner in Venezuela and Guaido’s mentor.

In his short career, Guaido has been applauded for building unity among fellow legislators. Now his challenge is to do the same across the country, channeling the desperate desire for change within the limits of a regime intent on suppressing dissent. “The situation has catapulted him into the spotlight,” Romero said.

“He’s breathed new life into the opposition,” said David Smilde, an analyst for the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group. “The opposition has finally put forward a fresh face that has courage, new ideas and leadership skills that has started to revive them.”

Already, some in the military have taken up Mr. Guaidó’s call, staging a brief act of resistance at a military base in Caracas, which was followed by violent protests after it was put down.

Mr. Maduro called the opposition a bunch of “little boys,” saying they were pawns of the Trump administration. María Iris Varela Rangel, a top politician in Maduro’s party, wrote on Twitter: “Guaidó: I have already gotten your jail cell ready with the right uniform, and I hope you name your cabinet quickly to know who will keep you company, you stupid kid.”

Mr. Guaidó’s challenge to Mr. Maduro comes at a time when his presidency faces mounting challenges of legitimacy. On Jan. 10, the president was sworn in for a second six-year term after a disputed election in May that many countries did not recognize.

“People have been frustrated with the opposition, and tired of the same old faces of the politicians of the old establishment that have failed,” said Margarita López Maya, a retired political scientist in Caracas who taught at the Central University of Venezuela.

Does Guaidó have a chance at taking power? Guaidó called the mass protests on Jan. 23 in order to get a show of public support for his plan to take over the presidency. “We will stay in the streets until we have freedom for Venezuela,” Guaido told supporters and television cameras at the protest. “We will fight back until we have democracy.”

Small-scale protests happen on a daily basis in Venezuela over food shortages and labor rights. But if demonstrations become large enough to overwhelm security forces’ ability contain them, that could trigger “a break in the chain of command within the military,” Moya-Ocampos says. “Then it is possible they could withdraw their support for Maduro.”

Juan Guaido has declared himself president of Venezuela — a move quickly endorsed by several Latin American countries, as well as Canada and the United States. Many people around the world, and even inside Venezuela, may not have known Guaido’s name.

Foreign officials, particularly in the United States, who want to see a transitional government in Venezuela, say they saw in Mr. Guaidó a fresh-faced leader from humble origins who contrasted with previous opposition leaders, whom Mr. Maduro disparaged as oligarchs and right-wing extremists.

While the United States recognized Mr. Guaidó as Venezuela’s leader, senior American officials have denounced Mr. Maduro as a dictator and made clear their support for Mr. Guaidó’s effort to oust Mr. Maduro and set up a transitional government. Last year, Trump administration officials met in secret with rebellious members of the military to discuss their plans to overthrow Mr. Maduro.

Vice President Mike Pence spoke directly to the Venezuelan people in a video released on YouTube and Twitter on Tuesday, calling Mr. Maduro a “dictator with no legitimate claim to power.” Mr. Pence said he recognized the National Assembly, led by Mr. Guaidó, as “the last vestige of democracy in your country,” and stated that, “we are with you, we stand with you, and we will stay with you until democracy is restored and you reclaim your birthright of libertad.”

In response, Mr. Maduro said Tuesday evening that he had ordered a “a total and absolute revision” of relations with the United States. He provided no details on what that might produce, but said decisions would be imminent.

“Who elects the president of Venezuela? Mike Pence?” Mr. Maduro asked during a live address on state television.

With short black hair peppered with grey, he had never one for these big public speeches, but Guaidó pushed himself to become the leader of a divided and unstructured opposition, whose biggest leaders were imprisoned, exiled or out of action.

“Guaidó is a fresh young man, and educated — he looks like the people, he talks like the people, he is a survivor and a family man, and also had prospects in big-league baseball,” José Manuel Bolívar, one of his party directors said.

Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez Biography and Profile (Politicoscope / NYT / Reuters / Time)

[kevinvtague]

Panoramic Weekly: Keep calm and ‘gradually’ hike

After a turbulent start to the month, the second half of August has turned out to be a much calmer period for financial markets. While geopolitical tensions have not gone away, investor sentiment is currently being well-supported by the favourable economic outlook in the US, coupled with the prospect of a continued period of low interest rates. Global equity and credit markets produced further steady gains over the week, with several of the major US equity indices hitting all-time highs.

Jerome Powell’s first speech as Fed chair at the annual Jackson Hole symposium was arguably the standout event of an otherwise quiet week. The key message was the expectation of ‘further gradual’ interest rate rises as the US economy continues to strengthen. However, the new Fed chair also emphasised the lack of inflationary pressures and noted that he saw little sign that the economy was overheating. This was interpreted by some as a dovish signal, which helped push 10-year US Treasury yields to a 3-month low following the speech. Meanwhile, the US Treasury curve continued to flatten, with the 10-2 Year Treasury Yield Spread falling below 0.2%. Fed governors, however, have openly said that they wouldn’t vote for any measures that might intentionally flatten the curve, something which could also be viewed as a dovish signal.

It was also a generally positive few days for emerging market assets, with continued strength in oil prices and a fall in the US dollar acting as a welcome tailwind. The majority of EM currencies strengthened over the week, although as ever there were one or two exceptions. The Brazilian real fell sharply on fears that the former president Lula – currently serving a 12-year jail sentence for corruption – may choose to run again. The Mexican peso also lost ground over the week – the initial rally following the news that the US and Mexico had agreed to revamp the NAFTA trade agreement was quickly reversed as a lack of detail led to more questions than answers.

Heading up:

EM Corporate Debt Market – getting bigger, and better? The Emerging Markets (EM) corporate debt market is forecast to add another year of continuous growth as EMs catch up with developed markets in terms of financial penetration and as EM companies improve their corporate governance. The growth, however, has also increased the proportion of High Yield (HY) issuers in the universe, which now represent almost 40% of the total, as seen in the chart. This, and their natural link to their sovereigns, makes them more vulnerable to external or idiosyncratic shocks: recent crisis in Argentina, Russia and Turkey, for instance, have taken the spreads of the JP Morgan Corporate EM Bond Index (CEMBI) to 340 basis points (bps) over US Treasuries, the highest level since Trump won the US election in 2016 (and EMs sold off on concerns of more trade barriers). This year’s crises have so far dragged the JPM’s CEMBI index 2.3% lower, although some specific countries have delivered positive returns, including Nigeria, Ghana, Hungary, Bahrain and Paraguay. For an analysis of EM Corporate valuations, read M&G fund manager Charles de Quinsonas’ “EM HY: is there value after the sell off?,” or watch Charles on: “EM Corporate debt: indiscriminate sell-off?”  For a video on how to find opportunity in less high-profile EM Corporate markets, watch M&G’s Mario Eisenegger’s video: “A tale from Chile – and other off-radar EMs.”

Mexican bonds – sombreros off: When Mexican debt and the peso plunged in November 2016 after Trump’s victory, few imagined the country’s bonos would be the 2nd best performing Fixed Income Asset class in the first 8 months of 2018, out of a list of 100 – with a total return of 8.1%, and only behind US non-agency Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities. Fears of a trade wall between the US and Mexico have waned as talks between the two countries to reach a new NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) deal have developed positively over the past few months. Investors have also been encouraged by recent inflation prints, below the 5% level since March. Some market observers believe that inflation peaked at 6.7% at the end of last year, being now on a more positive path. In-coming president López Obrador has also calmed fears of rising deficits as he has committed to fiscal prudence.

Heading down:

US Trade Deficit – growth matters:  Trying to fuel economic growth and starting a series of trade wars to reduce a country’s external deficit may be easier said than done: as seen on the chart, economic growth (orange line) is quite correlated to the trade balance (blue line) – the more growth, the bigger the trade deficit and viceversa. This happens because growth helps people import more from abroad, and also tends to increase the local currency, making exports less competitive. According to a study from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a positive fiscal shock of 1% of GDP widens the trade deficit by about 0.7% over 2.5 years and, in the case of the US, boosts the dollar by 8% over 1.5 years. Also, holding the world’s leading currency usually comes at the price of having a Current Account deficit, since foreign investors and governments need to buy US assets to build up their reserves. This leads to a Capital Account surplus which, by definition, needs a Current Account deficit to even out the Balance of Payments. So: holding the de facto world’s reserve currency, having low interest rates, a trade balance surplus and strong economic growth, all together, may be also easier to say, or to tweet, than to get it done.

Yield curve – unnerving investors: Much is being written about the ongoing flattening of the US yield curve, with many experts, including the US Federal Reserve (Fed), arguing that flat is not down and that a decade of record low rates has made the curve naturally flatter. Others say that this widely-used recession indicator stayed flat over five years in the late 1990s and that the same could happen again. While all these arguments fill the financial press pages, the difference between 2-10 year US Treasury yields continues to drop: it has now reached a meagre 20 bps, the lowest since mid 2007, just ahead of the Financial Crisis.

from Surety Bonding Solutions https://www.bondvigilantes.com/blog/2018/08/30/panoramic-weekly-keep-calm-gradually-hike/

[newestbalance]

Mexico Town’s Identity Was Defined by 1 Party. Then, the People Turned on It.

ATLACOMULCO, Mexico — It’s in the names of streets and on some of the most prominent buildings. It’s embedded in the colorful murals that adorn the walls of city hall. It’s infused into the local history and lore. And most important, it’s reflected in the way the population has voted for decades.

For generations, the Institutional Revolutionary Party has been central to the identity of Atlacomulco.

The mostly rural municipality, about 50 miles northwest of Mexico City, is often called the cradle of the political party, known as the PRI, which has governed Mexico for most of the last century.

During the decades the PRI dominated Mexico, the centrist party perfected the art of political patronage and took good care of its own. This seems evident in Atlacomulco de Fabela, the municipal seat, a quiet town of narrow streets.

The town’s historic center looks as if it’s been given a fresh coat of paint. Renovations of the central square and a nearby plaza that fronts the covered market and the 17th-century church were completed recently, and a soccer field was replaced with a fancy new sports complex.

Nowhere in Mexico did loyalty toward the PRI run as deep as in Atlacomulco, and the bond seemed eternal: The party’s politicians have occupied the mayor’s office, without interruption, since 1929.

Then came Mexico’s general election om Sunday.

The leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador won the presidency in a landslide, and the PRI lost most of its seats in Congress. It was also crushed in state and local elections across the country.

The party was eviscerated, part of a seismic shift that has left a new political landscape across the country.

But in perhaps the most symbolically devastating result of the day, the PRI even lost the mayor’s race in Atlacomulco — by a vast margin.

“I was surprised because the current president has done the work requested,” said Pedro Martínez, 58, an inspector for the municipality, gesturing toward the central square’s fresh paving stones. “But the people still turned on the party.”

For the party stalwarts here, the bludgeoning was emotionally devastating.

“A resounding defeat, meaning overwhelming, meaning hard, painful,” said Manuel González Espinoza, 60, a member of the PRI’s executive committee in the State of Mexico, which includes Atlacomulco.

“A tragedy,” he muttered, sitting in the PRI’s municipal headquarters in Atlacomulco, a two-story building gloomy with loss.

Some who voted against the party found it a wrenching decision.

For as long as he had been eligible to vote, Samuel Israde had cast his ballot only for PRI candidates. It was automatic.

But on Sunday, Mr. Israde, 54, who works in the municipal treasurer’s office, did what had once been unthinkable: He voted against the PRI In every race.

“When you’re voting against your party, it’s like a knife in your chest,” he said, mimicking a dagger plunging into his heart. “But it was a necessary change.”

He added, “You do it for your children.”

Even voters who stuck with the PRI said they could understand how, in disgust, so many people turned their backs on it.

On a recent evening, Mr. Martínez, the municipal inspector, was standing on the main square keeping an eye on things. Children chased plastic hoops across the square as evening settled on the town and nearby mountains darkened to the color of a day-old bruise.

Mr. Martínez voted only for the PRI candidates last Sunday.

But he recognized that some of the same issues that propelled disgruntled voters around the nation to vote against the PRI were in play in Atlacomulco, including unpopular reforms. Voters across Mexico were also fed up with widespread corruption and impunity, rampant violence and economic inequality.

Rosario Cárdenas Cárdenas, too, stood by the party despite the economic hit her plant nursery has taken recently. Prices for soil and plant pots have gone up, she said, and her business had gotten more expensive to run.

Despite her misgivings about the state of the country, however, Ms. Cardenas, 30, cast her vote for the PRI’s candidates in local, state and national elections.

“It’s because I had hope,” she explained as she opened her nursery at dawn one morning this week in the rural community of San Lorenzo Tlacotepec. “And hope is the last thing to die.”

On the courtyard walls of the two-story municipal headquarters, murals depict the history and culture of Atlacomulco. There are scenes of indigenous people hunting a buck, weaving fabric, making pottery and farming.

One of the murals, on a wall outside the mayor’s second-floor office, is dominated by the portraits of six former PRI governors from Atlacomulco, including the current president, Enrique Peña Nieto.

This municipality’s name has become synonymous with the party’s dominance in Mexico’s political life. People speak of the “Atlacomulco Group,” an infamous cabal of business and political leaders with roots in this region and a steering influence over the PRI, and so the nation.

On a recent evening, Mr. Israde paused in front of the mural, an impish glint in his eye.

“The PRI,” he said, making the sign of the cross. “Rest in peace.”

But die-hard supporters insist the party will survive.

“The PRI never dies,” declared Isaac Contreras Alcántara, 77, a party loyalist who runs a small restaurant in Atlacomulco. “It will be renewed.”

It is unclear, though, exactly how the party might rise from the ashes.

Mr. González, the state PRI official, said the party must begin its renaissance with an “objective and realistic diagnosis” of itself and its recent leadership at all levels of government, its choices of candidates and its performance during the campaigns and the elections.

“The PRI needs a reconstruction, a new foundation,” he declared.

As devastating as this week’s elections were, however, Mr. González somehow found something to admire in them.

“What happened Sunday is an expression of the democratic maturity in the country,” he said, sounding mostly convinced by his own words. “And that’s very important.”

This understanding, he said, was crucial to rebuilding the PRI, a process that promises to be long and arduous — if it happens at all.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Turning on a Town’s Identity to Elect New Leadership. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

The post Mexico Town’s Identity Was Defined by 1 Party. Then, the People Turned on It. appeared first on World The News.

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[cleopatrarps]

Leftist Wins Mexico Presidency in Landslide With Mandate to Reshape Nation

MEXICO CITY — 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?

In the end, the nation’s desire for change outweighed any of the misgivings the candidate inspired.

“It is time for a change, it’s time to go with López Obrador, and see what happens,” said Juan de Dios Rodríguez, 70, a farmer in the state of Hidalgo, a longtime bastion of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which has dominated politics in Mexico for nearly his entire life. “This will be my first time voting for a different party.”

In his third bid for the presidency, Mr. López Obrador, 64, won in what authorities called the largest election in Mexican history, with some 3,400 federal, state and local races contested in all.

A global repudiation of the establishment has brought populist leaders to power in the United States and Europe, and conservative ones to several countries in Latin America, including Colombia after an election last month.

“The recent elections in Latin America have exhibited the same demand for change,” said Laura Chinchilla, the former president of Costa Rica. “The results are not endorsements of ideologies, but rather demands for change, a fatigue felt by people waiting for answers that simply have not arrived.”

Mr. López Obrador, who vowed to cut his own salary and raise those of the lowest paid government workers, campaigned on a narrative of social change, including increased pensions for the elderly, educational grants for Mexico’s youth and additional support for farmers.

He said he would fund his programs with the money the nation saves by eliminating corruption, a figure he places at tens of billions of dollars a year, a windfall some experts doubt will materialize.

Realistic or not, the allure of his message is steeped in the language of nostalgia for a better time — and in a sense of economic nationalism that some fear could reverse important gains of the last 25 years.

In this way, and others, the parallels between Mr. López Obrador and President Trump are hard to ignore. Both men are tempestuous leaders, who are loath to concede a political fight. Both men lash out at enemies, and view the media with suspicion.

And even as the electoral rage propelling Mr. López Obrador’s rise is largely the result of domestic issues, there will be pressure for the new president to take a less conciliatory line with his American counterpart. Mexico’s current government, led by President Enrique Peña Nieto, has suffered a string of humiliations at the hands of Mr. Trump with relative silence.

But Mr. López Obrador is not the typical Latin American populist, nor does his branding as a leftist convey the complexity of his ethos.

In building his third candidacy for the presidency, he cobbled together an odd group of allies, some with contradictory visions. There are leftists, unions, far-right conservatives and endorsements from religious groups. How he will manage these competing interests remains to be seen.

Mr. López Obrador will inherit an economy that has seen only modest growth over the last few decades, and one of his biggest challenges will be to convince foreign investors that Mexico will remain open for business.

If he fails to convince the markets that he is committed to continuity, or makes abrupt changes to the current economic policy, the country could find itself struggling to achieve even the modest growth of prior administrations.

There is some evidence that Mr. López Obrador knows what is at stake. Though political rivals have painted him as a radical on par with Hugo Chavez, the former socialist leader of Venezuela, Mexico’s president-elect has vowed not to raise the national debt and to maintain close relations with the United States.

Mr. López Obrador, who is commonly referred to by his initials, AMLO, has a history of working with the private sector, and has appointed a respected representative to handle negotiations the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“Today AMLO is a much more moderate, centrist politician who will govern the business community with the right hand, and the social sectors and programs with the left,” said Antonio Sola, who created the effective fear campaign that branded Mr. López Obrador as a danger to Mexico in the 2006 election he lost.

“The great difference between then and now is that the dominant emotion among voters is fury,” Mr. Sola said. “And anger is much stronger than fear.”

On the issue of violence, Mr. López Obrador has largely failed to articulate a policy that goes much beyond platitudes. At one point, he said that amnesty for low-level offenders could be an option, as a way to end the cycle of incarceration.

When the suggestion summoned widespread criticism, he claimed the idea was merely an effort to think outside the box. But analysts say there is little that distinguishes his platform from those of other candidates, or even his predecessor, Mr. Peña Nieto.

More likely, he will find himself in the unenviable position of managing the crisis, as opposed to ending it.

Mr. Peña Nieto came to office in 2012 with a promise to bring Mexico into the 21st century, forging consensus with opposition parties to pass a slate of much needed reforms that overhauled the calcified energy, education and telecommunications sectors.

But to Mr. López Obrador, who has spent much of his political career concerned with the nation’s have-nots, these reforms meant to modernize institutions trapped in the past were little more than assaults on the people.

He has promised to review the contracts for oil exploration awarded to international firms, and to respect those that are clean — and take legal measures against those that are not.

It is possible that the awarding of new contracts will cease, potentially placing Mexico’s future oil exploration and production back into state hands. From there, it is unclear whether Mr. López Obrador would hand the rights back to the nation’s state-run oil company, Pemex, which has suffered severe problems with corruption and inefficiency.

For many, the future of the nation’s oil industry exemplifies the central concern of a López Obrador presidency: uncertainty.

For all the talk of change, many worry his presidency will be a back-to-the-future sort of moment.

“What concerns me the most about the energy and education is the ambiguity of the alternative road ahead, if he decides to roll them back,” said Jesus Silva Herzog, a political-science professor at the School of Government at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education.

Some worry about how the president-elect will handle the opposition, as his fiery personality has both delighted and concerned voters.

He has a history of ignoring his detractors, or taking them on in public ways. He refers to the nonprofit community in Mexico, which has been a force for change and democracy, as “bourgeoisie.”

For his opponents, this election cycle has brought the three main parties of Mexico to a crisis point. Mr. Peña Nieto’s party will be vastly reduced in size and power in the new Congress, while the leftist Party of Democratic Revolution may not even survive.

Perhaps the only party with enough power to serve as a counterweight will be the National Action Party, despite having endured a bruising split in the campaign.

On the issue of fighting graft, perhaps the signature element of his campaign, few believe that it will be easy to address the complex realities of systemic corruption.

That could set up Mr. López Obrador to be a continuation of the disappointment that so many voters are reacting to.

“The biggest problem I see are the expectations he has built,” said Carlos Illades, a professor of social sciences at the Autonomous Metropolitan University and a historian of Mexico’s left. “The problem is going to be what he is not able to do. There are people who are expecting a lot.”

Elisabeth Malkin contributed reporting.

The post Leftist Wins Mexico Presidency in Landslide With Mandate to Reshape Nation appeared first on World The News.

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[dragnews]

Leftist Wins Mexico Presidency in Landslide With Mandate to Reshape Nation

MEXICO CITY — 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?

In the end, the nation’s desire for change outweighed any of the misgivings the candidate inspired.

“It is time for a change, it’s time to go with López Obrador, and see what happens,” said Juan de Dios Rodríguez, 70, a farmer in the state of Hidalgo, a longtime bastion of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which has dominated politics in Mexico for nearly his entire life. “This will be my first time voting for a different party.”

In his third bid for the presidency, Mr. López Obrador, 64, won in what authorities called the largest election in Mexican history, with some 3,400 federal, state and local races contested in all.

A global repudiation of the establishment has brought populist leaders to power in the United States and Europe, and conservative ones to several countries in Latin America, including Colombia after an election last month.

“The recent elections in Latin America have exhibited the same demand for change,” said Laura Chinchilla, the former president of Costa Rica. “The results are not endorsements of ideologies, but rather demands for change, a fatigue felt by people waiting for answers that simply have not arrived.”

Mr. López Obrador, who vowed to cut his own salary and raise those of the lowest paid government workers, campaigned on a narrative of social change, including increased pensions for the elderly, educational grants for Mexico’s youth and additional support for farmers.

He said he would fund his programs with the money the nation saves by eliminating corruption, a figure he places at tens of billions of dollars a year, a windfall some experts doubt will materialize.

Realistic or not, the allure of his message is steeped in the language of nostalgia for a better time — and in a sense of economic nationalism that some fear could reverse important gains of the last 25 years.

In this way, and others, the parallels between Mr. López Obrador and President Trump are hard to ignore. Both men are tempestuous leaders, who are loath to concede a political fight. Both men lash out at enemies, and view the media with suspicion.

And even as the electoral rage propelling Mr. López Obrador’s rise is largely the result of domestic issues, there will be pressure for the new president to take a less conciliatory line with his American counterpart. Mexico’s current government, led by President Enrique Peña Nieto, has suffered a string of humiliations at the hands of Mr. Trump with relative silence.

But Mr. López Obrador is not the typical Latin American populist, nor does his branding as a leftist convey the complexity of his ethos.

In building his third candidacy for the presidency, he cobbled together an odd group of allies, some with contradictory visions. There are leftists, unions, far-right conservatives and endorsements from religious groups. How he will manage these competing interests remains to be seen.

Mr. López Obrador will inherit an economy that has seen only modest growth over the last few decades, and one of his biggest challenges will be to convince foreign investors that Mexico will remain open for business.

If he fails to convince the markets that he is committed to continuity, or makes abrupt changes to the current economic policy, the country could find itself struggling to achieve even the modest growth of prior administrations.

There is some evidence that Mr. López Obrador knows what is at stake. Though political rivals have painted him as a radical on par with Hugo Chavez, the former socialist leader of Venezuela, Mexico’s president-elect has vowed not to raise the national debt and to maintain close relations with the United States.

Mr. López Obrador, who is commonly referred to by his initials, AMLO, has a history of working with the private sector, and has appointed a respected representative to handle negotiations the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“Today AMLO is a much more moderate, centrist politician who will govern the business community with the right hand, and the social sectors and programs with the left,” said Antonio Sola, who created the effective fear campaign that branded Mr. López Obrador as a danger to Mexico in the 2006 election he lost.

“The great difference between then and now is that the dominant emotion among voters is fury,” Mr. Sola said. “And anger is much stronger than fear.”

On the issue of violence, Mr. López Obrador has largely failed to articulate a policy that goes much beyond platitudes. At one point, he said that amnesty for low-level offenders could be an option, as a way to end the cycle of incarceration.

When the suggestion summoned widespread criticism, he claimed the idea was merely an effort to think outside the box. But analysts say there is little that distinguishes his platform from those of other candidates, or even his predecessor, Mr. Peña Nieto.

More likely, he will find himself in the unenviable position of managing the crisis, as opposed to ending it.

Mr. Peña Nieto came to office in 2012 with a promise to bring Mexico into the 21st century, forging consensus with opposition parties to pass a slate of much needed reforms that overhauled the calcified energy, education and telecommunications sectors.

But to Mr. López Obrador, who has spent much of his political career concerned with the nation’s have-nots, these reforms meant to modernize institutions trapped in the past were little more than assaults on the people.

He has promised to review the contracts for oil exploration awarded to international firms, and to respect those that are clean — and take legal measures against those that are not.

It is possible that the awarding of new contracts will cease, potentially placing Mexico’s future oil exploration and production back into state hands. From there, it is unclear whether Mr. López Obrador would hand the rights back to the nation’s state-run oil company, Pemex, which has suffered severe problems with corruption and inefficiency.

For many, the future of the nation’s oil industry exemplifies the central concern of a López Obrador presidency: uncertainty.

For all the talk of change, many worry his presidency will be a back-to-the-future sort of moment.

“What concerns me the most about the energy and education is the ambiguity of the alternative road ahead, if he decides to roll them back,” said Jesus Silva Herzog, a political-science professor at the School of Government at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education.

Some worry about how the president-elect will handle the opposition, as his fiery personality has both delighted and concerned voters.

He has a history of ignoring his detractors, or taking them on in public ways. He refers to the nonprofit community in Mexico, which has been a force for change and democracy, as “bourgeoisie.”

For his opponents, this election cycle has brought the three main parties of Mexico to a crisis point. Mr. Peña Nieto’s party will be vastly reduced in size and power in the new Congress, while the leftist Party of Democratic Revolution may not even survive.

Perhaps the only party with enough power to serve as a counterweight will be the National Action Party, despite having endured a bruising split in the campaign.

On the issue of fighting graft, perhaps the signature element of his campaign, few believe that it will be easy to address the complex realities of systemic corruption.

That could set up Mr. López Obrador to be a continuation of the disappointment that so many voters are reacting to.

“The biggest problem I see are the expectations he has built,” said Carlos Illades, a professor of social sciences at the Autonomous Metropolitan University and a historian of Mexico’s left. “The problem is going to be what he is not able to do. There are people who are expecting a lot.”

Elisabeth Malkin contributed reporting.

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