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Mexico

Mexico: Indigenous Farmers Organize To Protect Maize

Indigenous farmers from southern Mexico are organizing and creating seed banks to defend traditional maize from the climate crisis, in the midst of the Mexican government’s fight against genetically modified grains, mainly from the United States. In Oaxaca, southern Mexico, Bernardino Cruz, 48, planted two hectares of maize at the beginning of the rainy season, predicting a good harvest until the rains stopped during the last month. For this reason, he changed his planting method from rainfed to irrigated so as not to lose the production of the native “belatove” corn, an ear about 10 centimeters long composed of mostly white kernels.

Government Report On Ayotzinapa 43 Links Ex-President To The Crime

On September 28, parents of the 43 students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, who disappeared in 2014, lifted the sit-in protests that they had held for eight days in front of the Military Camp No. 1 in the capital Mexico City. The decision came after the presentation of a new report by the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice in the Ayotzinapa case (COVAJ), which revealed that a meeting of authorities had taken place in October 2014 to construct the so-called “historic truth” and that it was attended by the then president Enrique Peña Nieto, among other officials.

Workers Around The World Stand With Striking US Autoworkers

As the first-ever simultaneous strike at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis continues, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union is being cheered on not only by a majority of Americans, but also by much of the international labor movement. Over the past two weeks, the UAW has received messages of solidarity from worker organizations in multiple countries, including a letter from the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa and an email from Malaysia’s National Union of Transport Equipment & Allied Industries Workers — both of which represent autoworkers in their respective countries. “The world is watching, and the people are on our side,” UAW President Shawn Fain said last Friday.

Parents Of Disappeared Ayotzinapa Students Begin Indefinite Sit-In

On Thursday, September 21, parents of the 43 students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, who disappeared in September 2014, demonstrated in front of the Military Camp No. 1 in the capital Mexico City. Carrying large banners that read “Where are our children?”, “We are missing 43”, and “Because they were taken alive, we want them back alive,” among others, the parents demanded that the Mexican Armed Forces hand over all available information about the mass kidnapping and disappearance of their loved ones. The parents and relatives of the students, with the help of students from different rural colleges, set up a camp outside the camp and began an indefinite sit-in protest.

Mexican Auto Parts Workers Face Blacklist After Union Campaign

In August 2022, auto parts workers at VU Manufacturing won a landmark election to gain recognition for a new independent union, the Mexican Workers’ League (La Liga). A year later, after refusing to negotiate a new contract, the company has shut down, leaving 400 workers jobless—and 71 workers without their legally-mandated severance pay. VU is located in the border city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila, where politicians brag about maintaining “labor peace” in the foreign-owned factories known as maquiladoras. This “peace” is largely mediated by the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), a powerful company-friendly union notorious for signing contracts behind workers’ backs and preventing them from organizing genuine, democratic unions.

Mexico’s Supreme Court Decriminalizes Abortion Nationally

On Wednesday, September 6, Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice (SCJN) unanimously ruled to decriminalize abortion at the national level. The SCJN resolved that the legal system that criminalizes abortion in the Federal Penal Code is unconstitutional as it violates the human rights of women and people with capacity for pregnancy. The ruling came two years after the SCJN first declared criminal penalties for abortion as unconstitutional and ordered the northern State of Coahuila to remove sanctions for abortion from its criminal code in September 2021. The ruling was in response to a case filed in 2018 challenging a criminal law in the Coahuila State legislation that punished women and pregnant individuals for terminating their pregnancy.

Growing Number Of Countries Consider Making Ecocide A Crime

A growing number of countries are considering introducing laws to make ecocide a crime. Mexico is the latest country where politicians are seeking to deter environmental damage – and to get justice for its victims – by criminalising it. Karina Marlen Barrón Perales, congresswoman for Nuevo León, has submitted a bill to the Mexican congress introducing a new crime of “ecocide”. While damaging the environment is already a civil offence in most countries, recognition of ecocide elevates the most egregious cases to a crime – with accompanying penalties.

North American Truckers’ Movements Announce International Alliance

Mexico City, MX - Tamexun and Truckers Movement for Justice will formally meet in person for the first time, and are publicly announcing their historic international alliance. Tamexun, based in the United Mexican States, is an association formed to stop the exploitation of truckers, and is celebrating its fifth anniversary with Saturday's demonstration. Truckers Movement for Justice (TMJ), based in the United States of America, is a grassroots organization focused on economic issues affecting truckers and the trucking industry. Tamexun and TMJ are both comprised of truckers: company employees, lease-operators, and small carrier owner-operators.

AMLO’s Pro-Working Class Policies Are Why Poverty Decreased In Mexico

On August 10, the Mexican National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL) released a report revealing that from 2018 to 2022, the poverty rate declined from 49.9% of the population below the poverty line to 43.5%. In Mexico, the income poverty line is measured as those earning below the monetary value of what is required to afford food and non-food necessities each month. In these same four years, the “multidimensional poverty” level decreased from 41.9% to 36.3% of the total population. Multidimensional poverty is a unique metric used in Mexico to measure poverty not only in terms of income levels, but also in terms of the deprivation of social rights.

DPS Trooper Describes ‘Inhumane’ Treatment Of Migrants At The Border

Hearst Newspapers reported Monday on an email from a trooper from the Department of Public Safety who wrote that the state’s policies along the southern border have “stepped over a line into the inhumane.” The trooper describes incidents in which migrants attempting to cross the border were injured by razor wire on the Texas side of the Rio Grande, as well as troopers being ordered to push groups of people, including children, back into the water, and denying them water. Ben Wermund, the Washington correspondent for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News who broke the story, joined the Standard to share more.

Tijuana Groups Protest Border Wall Construction At Friendship Park

Tijuana, Mexico — Eduardo seemed not to notice the soft midday rain slowly dampening his clothes and beading up on the sleeves of his jacket. Just a couple hundred feet from where the Pacific lapped the beach of both Mexico and the U.S., drawing no distinction between the two, Eduardo pointed out the native and culinary plants he and his friends tend to each week. The corn, fennel and spinach grow just a foot or two from a row of tightly spaced, 18-foot-tall bollards reinforced with tightly woven steel mesh that mark the international border. On the Mexican side, the rusting metal is covered with brightly colored murals that attempt to lend the miles-long barrier a glimmer of humanity.

Tens Of Thousands Gather To Celebrate Fifth Anniversary Of AMLO’s Presidency

On Saturday, July 1, around 250,000 people gathered at Zócalo square in Mexico City to celebrate five years since the presidential victory of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). The citizens called AMLO’s victory as “the triumph of the people,” hailed the good work done by the AMLO government, and expressed their support for the Fourth Transformation of the country, led by AMLO’s ruling Morena party. This rally comes as the Morena Party is picking a new candidate for the upcoming presidential elections. Since assuming office, AMLO has taken significant steps in strengthening Mexico’s sovereignty and challenging the hegemony of the United States.

Mexico: Expanding Democracy And Defending Sovereignty

The international press is again bludgeoning Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, this time accusing him of attacking the country’s democratic institutions. It’s a baseless charge intended to undermine a government that refuses total obedience to US hegemony. On February 23, an electoral reform bill received its final approval in the Mexican Senate en route to being signed into law. The National Electoral Institute (INE) is widely recognized to be riddled with excess expenditure and a top-heavy bureaucracy. The new law simply mandates similar cost-saving measures to those that the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has applied to other governmental departments.

Mexico Refuses To Bow To US Sanction Threats

Almost three decades after NAFTA was signed, Mexico has overtaken the United States as the world leader in childhood obesity. As diets rich in native corn and other traditional foods have been supplanted by ultra-processed foods and beverages, most of them coming from the US, Mexico is now in the grip of an alarming health crisis. This issue was already discussed in a VOXEU study cross-posted here in 2018, the findings of which indicated that “across Mexican states, a one standard deviation increase in the unhealthy share of food imports from the US increases the likelihood of individuals being obese by about 5 percentage points.”

US ‘Exports Obesity’

The U.S. government has escalated its conflict with Mexico over that country’s restrictions on genetically modified corn, initiating the formal dispute-resolution process under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. It is only the latest in a decades-long U.S. assault on Mexico’s food sovereignty using the blunt instrument of a trade agreement that has inundated Mexico with cheap corn, wheat, and other staples, undermining Mexico’s ability to produce its own food. With the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador showing no signs of backing down, the conflict may well test the extent to which a major exporter can use a trade agreement to force a sovereign nation to abandon measures it deems necessary to protect public health and the environment.

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