SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
andres manuel lopez obrador
The US Has No Business Telling Mexico Not to Reform Its Judiciary
The United States might prioritize putting its own house in order and follow Mexico’s example to confront the unelected far-right ideologues who have hijacked U.S. democracy from the bench with total impunity.
Oct 02, 2024
This week Mexico's former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, handed over the reins to Claudia Sheinbaum, a close ally in his Morena party and the country's first female head of state. While López Obrador is leaving office with soaring approval ratings, and has overseen significant reductions in poverty and unemployment, recent articles and op-eds use terms like "authoritarian" and "autocratic" to describe his legacy.
The criticism of AMLO and Morena’s supposed "authoritarian bent" has centered on a recently approved package of constitutional reforms to Mexico's judicial system. The Editorial Board of The Washington Post declared that “at stake are judicial independence and the rule of law,” and The Economist warned that “in America’s biggest trading partner the rule of law and democracy are under attack.” On August 22, U.S. ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar called the reforms a “major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy.” Shortly afterwards, Canada’s ambassador also criticized the proposal, prompting López Obrador to suspend relations with both embassies.
The reforms, in particular the establishment of popular elections for judges and supreme court justices, will profoundly shake up the Mexican judiciary. However, there is little basis for alleging that they represent a threat to democracy. Whatever the drawbacks or merits of the measures, the United States—where an ultra-conservative Supreme Court has been plagued by egregious conflict of interest scandals—has no business interfering in Mexico’s domestic affairs, let alone a democratic and constitutional process of reform.
With the additional constitutional reforms proposed including measures to enshrine a ban on genetically modified corn, hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), and open-pit mining, a democratically elected supreme court willing to uphold such measures represents a genuine threat to big agrobusiness, fossil fuel capital, and extractive enterprises on both sides of the border.
More troublingly, attacks against Mexico’s judicial reform appeared to have more to do with disciplining the incoming Sheinbaum administration and undermining the progressive elements of her party’s agenda than defending democracy and the rule of law.
The judicial package was just one of 20 constitutional reform initiatives submitted to the Mexican congress by AMLO in February. It comes after key measures of the governing Morena party’s agenda were blocked by the country’s high court. The reform provisions include measures to expedite case resolution; enforce gender parity; open supreme court sessions to the public; cap judicial salaries; keep challenged laws or policies active until ruled unconstitutional; and establish bodies to supervise and sanction judicial officials, as well as a less savory move to expand the list of crimes that warrant mandatory pretrial incarceration.
U.S. objections, however, are focused on one key transformation: the democratic election of the judiciary.
Until the reform, Mexico’s federal judges and magistrates, as well as local circuit and district judges, were appointed through a process overseen by the Consejo de la Judicatura Federal (Federal Judiciary Council), an unelected arm of the judicial branch. The supreme court is currently composed of 11 justices including the president of the court who oversees and participates in the plenary. They meet as a full group and in two five-member chambers; the justices are nominated by the president of Mexico, approved by the senate, and serve 15-year terms.
Under the newly approved judicial overhaul, federal judges and magistrates will be popularly elected for nine-year terms, with the possibility of reelection. The same process will take place at the state level for circuit and district courts. Supreme court justices (referred to as ministers in Mexico) and Federal Electoral Tribunal magistrates will also be popularly elected. The number of supreme court ministers will be cut to nine and their terms reduced to 12 years, while the two chambers would be eliminated in favor of the single body.
Contrary to claims of executive overreach, the reforms stipulate that candidates who meet the necessary qualifications be proposed in equal proportions by all three branches of government, then narrowed down via a lottery system. The first elections will take place in June 2025 for the supreme court, Federal Electoral Tribunal, and half of the federal judiciary. By 2027, all sitting magistrates and judges will be up for election.
Throughout AMLO’s presidency (2018–2024), Mexico’s supreme court has served as a backstop against some of the government’s more ambitious reforms, sometimes intervening on behalf of powerful business interests. In a 3-5 decision in March 2021, for example, a supreme court chamber struck down a recently passed Electricity Industry Law for privileging the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (Federal Electricity Commission), a public utility, over private sector investors. On two occasions, the court overturned electoral reforms which, like the judicial reform, sought to restructure national election oversight bodies and elect their authorities by popular vote.
Morena argues that the reforms are intended to root out corruption and nepotism in the judicial system and democratize a historically elitist and authoritarian judicial branch. This argument has merit: Internal studies have found family networks of up to 89 relatives employed in the courts; 53.4% of magistrates and 18% of judges had more than four relatives working in the judicial branch in 2022.
Judicial positions in Mexico are lucrative: That same year, more than 1,000 high-ranking judicial employees were taking in between 430,000 and 518,000 pesos per month, well above $21,500 per month at a time when the monthly minimum wage in most of the country stood below $260.
Sheinbaum has defended the new measures, explaining that rather than consolidate executive power, the reform abdicates it.
“With this reform, the next president is renouncing the power to personally name supreme court justices,” she told the public in a recent social media message. “The president is democratically elected. Deputies and senators are democratically elected. Now, judges, magistrates, and justices will be democratically elected.”
Yet the reforms were met with resistance from powerful corporate interests. The U.S.-Mexico Chamber of Commerce warned that, without significant changes, the “social and economic impacts will be inevitable and devastating.”
In his two-page statement criticizing the measure, U.S. Ambassador Salazar wrote that the proposal “will threaten the historic trade relationship we have built,” while the Canadian embassy declared it was a source of concern for private investors.
Major U.S. outlets including The Washington Post and The New York Times also ran incendiary columns that suggested the measure would undermine governance and endanger trade relations.
Their arguments varied. Some contended that elections would provide an opportunity for organized criminal influence; others warned the reforms represented an authoritarian presidential power grab; some merely raised vague concerns about destabilizing the investment climate. Little evidence backs up these claims. Rather than the contents of the reforms, big business, in Mexico and in the United States, appeared to balk at the restructuring of a system that has generally favored its interests.
Much of the criticism took a misogynist tone. The Post’s August 25 editorial espoused a patronizing and not subtly gendered view of President Sheinbaum’s relationship with López Obrador. It referred to AMLO as “her boss” and “her patron,” as though Mexico’s first female president were a promoted secretary and not a veteran politician and climate scientist with the strongest electoral mandate in Mexican history.
At the same time, the measure drew protest from within the Mexican judiciary, prompting marches, work stoppages, and strikes by judges and court workers. They framed their actions as a struggle against a reckless consolidation of executive power and politicization of the bench by the outgoing president. Advocates for reform dismissed these protests as attempts to retain long-held privileges.
The package faced formal challenges from within the judiciary as well. On August 31, a judge in the state of Morelos—herself a vociferous opponent of the reform—issued an injunction to suspend debate in congress at the behest of a group of magistrates who argue they stand to lose their jobs without due process. Simultaneously, a judge in Chiapas issued another injunction to prevent the measure from advancing to state legislatures for ratification. Hours later, a district court judge suspended both injunctions, permitting the process to move forward.
International financial markets also reacted negatively, perhaps because they find the current corrupt judiciary more friendly to their interests than an election-based system that would demand more accountability to public interest and needs. Morgan Stanley downgraded its investment recommendation for Mexico, and Fitch Ratings expressed concerns that the reforms could negatively impact the country’s corporate investment climate. The Mexican peso, which had fallen significantly following Sheinbaum’s commanding June 2 presidential victory, dropped again as the reforms moved forward in congress.
At a moment of political transition, these market moves send a disturbing message tantamount to blackmail to a fledgling administration with an ambitious agenda for a public sector-led sustainable energy transition. With the additional constitutional reforms proposed including measures to enshrine a ban on genetically modified corn, hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), and open-pit mining, a democratically elected supreme court willing to uphold such measures represents a genuine threat to big agrobusiness, fossil fuel capital, and extractive enterprises on both sides of the border.
Despite this tidal wave of opposition, the reforms passed the Chamber of Deputies on September 4, were approved in the senate on September 10, and were subsequently ratified by a majority of state legislatures, where Morena and its allies hold commanding majorities. On Sunday, September 16, Mexican Independence Day, the president signed them into law. Far from a presidential imposition, their implementation will be the result of Mexico’s constitutionally established democratic process.
Some critics on the left suggest that the reforms do not go far enough, exempting from popular election military tribunal judges and administrative magistrates. In an analysis for the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, distinguished jurist and human rights advocate Carlos Pérez Vasquez argued: “If the radical democratization of justice is the point of the proposed reform, why not go further, returning to our own history to restore, gradually, the existence of popular juries as a central element of the democratic legitimacy of the justice system?”
Nevertheless, accusations that the reforms will undermine judicial independence and politicize a neutral judiciary ignore the reality that Mexico’s judicial branch is already an active political agent, while charges that the measures represent an authoritarian executive power grab willfully mischaracterize the initiative. The reforms may be imperfect, and they may not address the profound structural obstacles to justice in Mexico, but they represent a legitimate political project with support across the country’s national and local representative bodies.
In a recent column, independent Mexican journalist and political analyst Viri Ríos, a critic of the proposal for judicial elections, dismissed the opposition’s claims that they would put the country on a path to dictatorship.
“Personally, I don’t support the judicial reform, but I’m a democrat and therefore I know that my disagreement doesn’t authorize me to call my opponent authoritarian, much less to use everything in my power to subvert the implementation of their agenda,” she wrote. “In a democracy, losing has consequences. Unfortunately, in Mexico it’s clear that the losers don’t want to accept them.”
That the United States, a nation that combines lifetime Supreme Court appointments with a state-by-state system of local judicial selection in which most hold popular elections for lower court judges, could credibly lecture Mexico about judicial reform and the perils of judicial democracy is laughable.
Moreover, Salazar’s threats constituted a brazen intervention into a sovereign nation’s internal politics—hardly a first for a U.S. ambassador, but unacceptable nonetheless. Instead, the United States might prioritize putting its own house in order and follow Mexico’s example to confront the unelected far-right ideologues who have hijacked U.S. democracy from the bench with total impunity.
Mexico has every right to experiment with its forms of democratic self-governance. Maybe the United States should give it a try.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Leftist Climate Scientist Claudia Sheinbaum Wins Mexican Presidency in Landslide
The close ally of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is the first woman to win Mexico's presidency.
Jun 03, 2024
Leftist Claudia Sheinbaum, a close ally of popular outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, won Mexico's presidential election in a landslide on Sunday, with an official tally showing her leading right-wing opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez by nearly 30 percentage points.
Gálvez
called Sheinbaum early Monday to acknowledge the results and concede defeat in what was the largest race in Mexico's history—a contest marred by deadly violence.
Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and the former mayor of Mexico City, is set to become the first woman and the first person of Jewish descent to lead Mexico after Sunday's overwhelming victory, which was a boon to her leftist Morena party. According to official vote tallies, The Washington Post reported, Morena and its allies "appeared close to winning a supermajority in Congress, which would allow them to change the constitution."
"We imagine a plural, diverse, and democratic Mexico," Sheinbaum told cheering supporters on Sunday. "Our duty is and will always be to look after each and every Mexican, without distinction."
David Adler, co-general coordinator of Progressive International, called Sheinbaum and Morena's win "epic, whopping, [and] historic."
And here are the numbers for the Mexican legislature. An epic, whopping, historic victory for MORENA and the ‘Fourth Transformation’ 🤯 https://t.co/3pCB1HvefS pic.twitter.com/EA2bKXb2CL
— David Adler (@davidrkadler) June 3, 2024
While Sunday's contest—which involved more than 20,000 government positions—and outcome were unprecedented, some questioned whether the results would be truly transformative for Mexico, where poverty and inequality remain high despite minimum wage hikes and other progress made in recent years under the government of López Obrador, commonly known as AMLO.
"AMLO has done a little better for people than prior governments, and Sheinbaum has pledged to continue his political approach, though with a greater emphasis on sustainability," Tamara Pearson, a Mexican Australian author, journalist, and activist, wrote for The Nation ahead of Sunday's race. "The pension for informal workers has increased to 6,000 pesos ($359) every two months. The health system for informal workers, which includes most Mexicans, is still extremely lacking but has improved."
The outgoing president has also faced backlash for pursuing fossil fuel infrastructure projects that risk damaging Indigenous communities and the planet.
Mongabay's Maxwell Radwin noted last week that Sheinbaum—who contributed to a major Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report—"continues to support one of AMLO's most polarizing projects, the Tren Maya, a 1,554-kilometer (966-mile) railroad crossing the Yucatán Peninsula."
"Despite dozens of legal complaints about deforestation, the destruction of cave ecosystems, and the relocation of Indigenous communities," Radwin observed, "she's defended the project and even suggested expanding it to a major port in the town of Progreso, in northwest Yucatán."
With Mexico facing a devastating heatwave and other climate impacts, Sheinbaum has pledged to prioritize clean energy development, vowing to "lead a $13.6 billion program to jumpstart Mexico's renewable energy sector," Politico reported.
Sheinbaum is set to take office in October.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Mexico Cuts Diplomatic Ties With Ecuador After 'Intolerable' Quito Embassy Raid
"This is a flagrant violation of international law and the sovereignty of Mexico," said Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Apr 06, 2024
Mexico on Friday night announced the suspension of diplomatic relations with Ecuador after police stormed the Mexican Embassy in Quito and kidnapped former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas, who was granted asylum after being convicted of what he claims are politically motivated corruption charges.
"Alicia Bárcena, our secretary of foreign affairs, has just informed me that police from Ecuador forcibly entered our embassy and detained the former vice president of that country who was a refugee and processing asylum due to the persecution and harassment he faces," Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on social media following the raid.
"This is a flagrant violation of international law and the sovereignty of Mexico, which is why I have instructed our chancellor to issue a statement regarding this authoritarian act, proceed legally, and immediately declare the suspension of diplomatic relations with the government of Ecuador," he added.
Bárcena said that "given the flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the injuries suffered by Mexican diplomatic personnel in Ecuador, Mexico announces the immediate breaking of diplomatic relations with Ecuador."
Mexican officials said multiple embassy staff members were injured during the raid. They also said that all Mexican diplomatic staff will immediately leave Ecuador, and that Mexico would appeal to the International Court of Justice to hold Ecuador accountable.
Roberto Canseco, head of chancellery and policy affairs at the embassy, told reporters that "what you have just seen is an outrage against international law and the inviolability of the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador."
"It is barbarism," he added. "It is impossible for them to violate the diplomatic premises as they have done."
Ecuador's government said that Glas—who served as vice president under former leftist President Rafael Correa from 2013-17—was a fugitive who has been "sentenced to imprisonment by the Ecuadorian justice system" and had been granted asylum "contrary to the conventional legal framework."
However, Ecuadorian attorney and political commentator Adrián Pérez Salazar told Al Jazeera that "the fact that there was this grievance does not—at least under international law—justify the forceful breach of an embassy."
"International law is very clear that embassies are not to be touched, and regardless of whatever justifications the Ecuadorian government might have, it is a case where the end does not justify the means," Salazar added.
Numerous Latin American nations including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Panama, Uruguay, and Venezuela condemned the Ecuadorian raid.
"The action constitutes a clear violation of the American Convention on Diplomatic Asylum and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which, in Article 22, provides that the locations of a diplomatic mission are inviolable and can be accessed by agents of the receiving state only with the consent of the head of mission," the Brazilian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "The measure carried out by the Ecuadorian government constitutes a serious precedent, and must be subject to strong repudiation, whatever the justification for its implementation."
Honduran President Xiomara Castro de Zelaya—who called the raid "an intolerable act for the international community"—said Saturday that she would convene a special emergency session of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States on Monday. Castro currently serves as CELAC's president pro tempore.
The Organization of American States General Secretariat issued a statement Saturday rejecting "any action that violates or puts at risk the inviolability of the premises of diplomatic missions and reiterates the obligation that all states have not to invoke norms of domestic law to justify non-compliance with their international obligations."
"In this context, it expresses solidarity with those who were victims of the inappropriate actions that affected the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador," the body added.
It's been a bad week for the inviolability of sovereign diplomatic spaces. Iran and Syria on Monday accused Israel of bombing the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, an attack that killed 16 people including senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders as well as Iranian and Syrian diplomats and other civilians.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Human Rights Watch to Mexico: Don't Help US 'Tear Apart' Its Asylum System
The group sent a letter to the Mexican president Thursday asking him not to agree to any deal that would see more asylum seekers expelled to Mexico without having their cases considered.
Jan 19, 2024
Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Thursday asking him not to broker any deal with the United States that would allow more asylum seekers to be sent to Mexico without due process.
The letter, also addressed to Secretary of Foreign Relations of Mexico Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, was sent one day before the pair were set to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington, D.C.
"I would like to urge the Mexican government to make a clear and public declaration that it will not agree to participate in any new migration management arrangement with the United States, whether formal or informal, that would lead to an increase in the expulsions of non-Mexican migrants and asylum seekers to Mexico, close existing legal pathways for migration, limit access to international protection, or establish a de facto 'safe third country' agreement with the United States," HRW Americas director Juanita Goebertus Estrada wrote in the letter.
The letter comes as the Biden administration is considering agreeing to immigration demands from Senate Republicans in exchange for $110 billion in funding for Ukraine, Israel, and other national security issues, as The Associated Press reported in December. Some of the policies under consideration include enabling the U.S. to expel asylum seekers to Mexico without hearing their claims; enshrining a Trump-era rule requiring that asylum seekers who pass through a third country prove that they applied for asylum there first and were denied; and essentially ending the humanitarian parole arrangement for Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans to travel in the U.S, according to HRW.
"These proposals would violate basic rights and further empower the criminal groups in Mexico that profit from kidnapping and extorting vulnerable migrants," Goebertus said in a statement.
Many of these proposals are similar to Trump-era policies that were challenged in court, but immigrant rights advocates worry that they would be harder to challenge if enshrined in law, AP reported.
"The Mexican president should make it clear he does not intend to be complicit in U.S. legislators' attempts to tear apart the U.S. asylum system."
"I never would have imagined that in a moment where we have a Democratic Senate and a Democratic White House we are coming to the table and proposing some of the most draconian immigration policies that there have ever been," Maribel Hernández Rivera, the American Civil Liberties Union director of policy and government affairs, told AP.
However, Obrador has a degree of leverage over these polices, because the U.S. cannot expel asylum seekers to Mexico without the cooperation of the Mexican government, HRW pointed out.
"President López Obrador has the opportunity to stand up for the rights of thousands of vulnerable mostly Latin American migrants and asylum seekers by refusing to make yet another deal to allow the U.S. to summarily expel people to Mexico," Goebertus said. "The Mexican president should make it clear he does not intend to be complicit in U.S. legislators' attempts to tear apart the U.S. asylum system."
In the past, Obrador has agreed to allow the U.S. to expel non-Mexican migrants back to Mexico under the "Return to Mexico" and Title 42 polices. He has also tried to prevent migrants from reaching the U.S. through Mexico. However, asylum seekers returned to Mexico have been exposed to dangers including kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder. HRW notes that U.S., Mexican, and international law all recognize the right to asylum and to not be sent back into a dangerous situation, formally known as refoulement.
In the letter, Goebertus also pointed out that ending the humanitarian parole program would mean renegotiating a deal with Mexico whereby Mexico agreed to receive 30,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan asylum seekers and migrants expelled from the U.S. every month while the U.S. would allow the same number to apply to travel within its borders. In addition, a policy both expelling asylum seekers to Mexico and requiring them to apply and be rejected in Mexico first would together create what amounts to a safe third country deal between the two countries, an agreement the Obrador administration has previously opposed.
"President López Obrador should prioritize Mexicans' security and the basic rights of vulnerable migrants and make it clear Mexico will not participate in facilitating further expulsions," Goebertus said.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Mexican President Urges US to Stop Fueling Migration With Sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela
"We're going to keep insisting on addressing the root causes of migration," said Andrés Manuel López Obrador. "Sanctions and blockades cannot be maintained."
Oct 03, 2023
Stressing the need for "addressing the root causes of migration," Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Monday blamed U.S. sanctions against countries including Cuba and Venezuela for driving the surge of migrants crossing his country to seek better lives in the United States.
Speaking at his daily press briefing, López Obrador said that 10,000 migrants per day make their way to Mexico's border with the United States. The president lamented the deaths of nine Cuban women and one girl who, after entering Mexico from Guatemala, were hiding in an overloaded cargo truck that crashed in the southern state of Chiapas on Sunday. Seventeen other migrants were injured in the crash.
López Obrador linked the migrants' deaths to the internationally condemned U.S. embargo of Cuba, which according to a 2018 report by a United Nations commission has cost the small island nation at least $130 billion over the past seven decades.
"That's why we're going to keep insisting on addressing the root causes of migration, the origins" he said. "Get to the core and stop politicking, think human rights over ideology. Sanctions and blockades cannot be maintained. We must help... the countries with the most poverty. There must be universal brotherhood."
López Obrador repeated his criticism of ongoing U.S. military aid to Ukraine in the face of so much poverty and suffering closer to home.
"How much have they destined to the war in Ukraine, $30 or $50 billion for the war, which is the most irrational thing there can be, and harmful," he said.
At last Friday's press briefing, López Obrador noted that the U.S. is spending "a lot more... for the war in Ukraine than what they give to help with poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean."
The president urged the U.S. "to remove blockades and stop harassing independent and free countries" and to implement "an integrated plan for cooperation so the Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Ecuadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans wouldn't be forced to emigrate."
"Remove blockades and stop harassing independent and free countries."
López Obrador's remarks—which came as senior Biden administration officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and Attorney General Merrick Garland prepared to visit Mexico this week—echo recent comments by Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
"The blockade against Venezuela has had a boomerang-type response, now hitting the very United States, which is the one who decided to impose the blockade. So, knocking at their door is the population that they drove into poverty," Petro—Colombia's first leftist president—told Democracy Now! on September 21.
"Many [Venezuelans] have left, and now what they want is to make it to the United States," he said. "How can one partially reduce the exodus? Well, lift the blockade against Venezuela."
"The scars of history, the invasions from before, the old imperialism, the old domination continue to weigh against humanity," Petro added. "That is why a government such as the Biden administration should... let the scars heal. They're not going to go away, but let them heal. End blockades and open up a plural dialogue, which I think would benefit all of us, both in North America and in South America."
Under U.S. pressure, Mexico has cracked down on migrants in an effort to stop refugees, asylum-seekers, and those looking for better economic conditions from reaching the countries' shared border. Checkpoints, discrimination, and alleged human rights crimes—including shootings with live ammunition and rapes—have increased in parts of Mexico, especially near its southern and northern borders.
Meanwhile, human rights defenders have documented continued "frequent and severe" abuse of migrants and some American citizens allegedly perpetrated by U.S. Department of Homeland Security personnel at the southern border.
Keep ReadingShow Less
In 'Assault' on Mexican Food Sovereignty, US Ramps Up Fight Over GM Corn
"U.S. agribusiness exporters, the biotech industry, and their allies in Congress are pushing this case, intent on compelling Mexico to accept U.S. exports without debate," said one expert.
Aug 17, 2023
After two-and-a-half months of failed negotiations, the U.S. government on Thursday intensified its effort to quash Mexico's limits on genetically modified corn imports by calling for the formation of a dispute settlement panel under a North American trade deal.
In a 2020 decree backed by agricultural, consumer, environmental, public health, and worker groups, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) announced plans to phase out genetically modified (GM) corn and the herbicide glyphosate by January 2024.
Under pressure from the U.S. government and impacted industries, he issued a new decree in February reiterating plans to block GM corn imports for human consumption by then but lifting the deadline for imports intended for livestock feed and industrial use.
"The Mexican government will show what has occurred: Its cherished tortillas are being contaminated with glyphosate and GM corn. And they intend to put a stop to that."
While AMLO's move was seen as a concession to the U.S. and lobbyists challenging his policies, the Biden administration in June still requested 75 days of formal negotiations. After talks ended Wednesday, U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai confirmed the decision to form a panel under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
"Through the USMCA dispute panel, we seek to resolve our concerns and help ensure consumers can continue to access safe and affordable food and agricultural products," Tai said Thursday. "It is critical that Mexico eliminate its USMCA-inconsistent biotechnology measures so that American farmers can continue to access the Mexican market and use innovative tools to respond to climate and food security challenges. Our bilateral relationship with Mexico, one of our oldest and strongest trading partners, is rooted in trust and honesty, and there are many areas where we will continue to cooperate and work together."
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack similarly said that "Mexico's approach to biotechnology is not based on science" and "the United States is continuing to exercise its rights under the USMCA to ensure that U.S. producers and exporters have full and fair access to the Mexican market."
The Mexican Ministry of Economy responded in a statement that "Mexico does not agree with the position of the United States" and "is prepared to defend the Mexican position before this international panel and demonstrate: 1) that the national regulation is consistent with the commitments signed in the treaty; and 2) that the challenged measures do not have commercial effects."
The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) has previously supported Mexico's efforts to phase out GM corn and glyphosate and on Thursday challenged claims by U.S. officials and agribusiness about Mexican obligations under the treaty and the potential economic impact of the policies.
"U.S. agribusiness exporters, the biotech industry, and their allies in Congress are pushing this case, intent on compelling Mexico to accept U.S. exports without debate. It is an assault on Mexico's food sovereignty," said Karen Hansen-Kuhn, IATP director of trade and international strategies. "Trade rules should provide a forum to protect and advance rights, rather than block them."
Hansen-Kuhn on Thursday authored an op-ed about Mexico's rights under the USMCA while ITAP senior adviser Timothy A. Wise wrote about "exaggerated claims of economic damage" that "sprang from a convenient set of assumptions, all of which are flawed and now outdated in light of the more recent presidential decree."
"As Mexican Economy Minister Raquel Buenrostro stated in response to the USTR request for technical consultations, Mexico's decree is based on science, and she will challenge the U.S. government in the consultations to show 'quantitatively, with numbers, something that has not occurred: that the corn decree has commercially affected U.S. exporters,'" Wise also said.
"The Mexican government will show what has occurred: Its cherished tortillas are being contaminated with glyphosate and GM corn," he continued. "And they intend to put a stop to that."
As Reuters detailed Thursday:
Under USMCA's dispute settlement rules, a five-person panel, chosen from a roster of pre-approved experts, must be convened within 30 days, with a chair jointly chosen and the U.S. side choosing two Mexican panelists and Mexico choosing two American panelists. The panel will review testimony and written submissions and its initial report is due 150 days after the panel is convened.
Previous USMCA dispute panels last year ruled in the U.S.'s favor in a dispute over Canadian dairy quotas, and against the U.S. on automotive rules of origin, siding with Mexico and Canada.
There have been other disagreements between the U.S. and Mexico, most notably over energy in which the U.S. has argued that Mexico's nationalist policy prejudices foreign companies.
Arturo Sarukhán, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States, said on social media Thursday that "of the two consultation processes—energy and yellow corn—this is the one that is politically most relevant for the White House in 2024," given the significance of agricultural states such as Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin to Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden, who is seeking reelection, and the GOP nominee, which could be former President Donald Trump, who signed the USMCA.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Stop the Deforestation Express
The U.S. should speak up against the Mayan Train that is harming workers, Indigenous communities, and biodiversity in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.
Jul 08, 2023
One of the differences between politicians and scientists is that they have an affinity for grand plans, while we sweat the details. Life, and death, are in the details.
Construction of the Mayan Train, a 950-mile loop connecting tourist and agricultural hubs around the Yucatán Peninsula, has often changed plans because of extreme risks identified to humans, other animals, and artifacts. At no point has the project paused to consider whether Plan B, C, D, E, etc. is any less damaging than Plan A. We now think of it as The Deforestation Express, an improvisational tragedy that has displaced and sickened people, killed bat colonies, endangered jaguars, damaged aquifers, and more.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador intended the train to be part of his legacy. When his term ends in September 2024, the project will be far from complete. There are real doubts that any subsequent administration will want to bankroll the fiasco, which may come in at 70% over budget.
All of North America, indeed the globe, shares a common environmental destiny.
López Obrador should suspend construction of the train and instead establish a planning procedure for rail service to the region. That process should weigh economic development, the region’s unique cultural treasures, the many species inhabiting the forest, the rights of the Indigenous people who live in and have long stewarded that forest, and the myriad services the forest provides Mexico and the planet.
Boondoggles are the worst kind of legacy. López Obrador would do better to take the bold step of halting construction and convening an informed and equitable planning process that could serve as a model for other large infrastructure projects. You can’t put a plaque on a process; but unlike the Mayan Train, it could actually do some good.
The train is meant for moving people and freight. Yet, its importance to the tourist industry, strongly supported by U.S. citizens, is a driving force. The administration has already shown it will bend to the wishes of this industry. After the powerful Riviera Maya hotel lobby protested that the track’s placement was not providing a fast enough connection to the resorts, newly carved out of ancient forest, the train route cut even deeper into the jungle than originally planned, disturbing protected caves.
All of North America, indeed the globe, shares a common environmental destiny. The growing evidence from the ongoing construction suggests that this project will affect the Yucatán aquifer system, one of the biggest sources of fresh water on Earth and the basis for all life on the peninsula. Many of the nonhuman animals in the region quietly help to fill American supermarkets with an astounding variety of relatively cheap food.
Already, the Deforestation Express has affected more than a dozen caves, habitat for bats, bees, and other animals that humans cannot live without. Logging to clear its path collapsed a two-mile cavern called the Avispa Enojada (“Angry Wasp”) that had stood for 2 million years, where the jaguar came to drink and where the cavefish lived for so long in darkness that they eventually evolved to have no eyes.
The collapse destroyed huge bat colonies. Bats are agriculture’s best friend, a free, nontoxic means to eliminate pests and pollinate crops. Killing bats hurts the food supply. Some bats are migratory, so the very same animal who is making Mexican farms more productive will come north to provide the same service in the U.S. Even in caves that survive the construction, vibrations from the rail line will likely disrupt the bats’ breeding.
Meanwhile, the people building this railroad are already suffering. To date, more than 500 cases of Leishmaniasis, a protozoan infection from the jungle, roughly twice those reported last year, are affecting primarily the train workers. These workers are shuttling the protozoan to urban centers and throughout the peninsula.
In 2019, the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights criticized the Mexican government for not meeting international standards guiding consultations with Indigenous people on the project. In December 2022, a panel of U.N. experts again called on Mexico to ensure respect for human rights and the environment. The International Tribunal for Nature´s Rights also condemned the project, calling it an eco- and ethnocide. The United States must amplify these calls to save Yucatán’s life-sustaining biodiversity.
The train has been classified by López Obrador as a project essential to national security. This is, to be charitable, a stretch. But the administration has seized on the designation to proceed with construction in defiance of resident protests, scientific fact, and even the law. The international community must focus more attention on what is happening deep in the jungle, before a great global silence destroys Yucatán.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Greenpeace Calls on US and Mexico to Defuse Largest Carbon Bomb in North America
"The oil and gas industry has lit a fuse on the Permian Basin carbon bomb that threatens to blow up any hope of a livable future," said one campaigner. "It's time for Presidents Biden and López Obrador to commit to ending the exploitation and destruction of our communities."
Jan 10, 2023
Ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden's Tuesday meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Greenpeace implored the two men to commit to ending all new oil and gas development in the Permian Basin, increasing clean energy investments, and securing a just transition for fossil fuel workers.
As detailed in a recent multimedia report, the Permian Basin—home to two million people in West Texas and southeast New Mexico—was transformed into "the world's single most prolific oil and gas field" during last decade's drilling and fracking boom.
If fossil fuel executives' plans to expand extraction in the basin and boost exports from the Gulf Coast are allowed to go forward, experts estimate that nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide would be emitted by 2050—equivalent to 10% of the world's remaining "carbon budget," or the amount of pollution compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels by the century's end. Meanwhile, a recent study found that the basin's pipelines are currently leaking 14 times more methane than previously thought.
"Mexico's updated climate goals can only be attained if both Mexico and the U.S. put an end to exploitation of the Permian Basin," Gustavo Ampugnani, executive director of Greenpeace Mexico, said Tuesday in a statement. "Greenpeace offices in the two countries will campaign on all fronts until Presidents López Obrador and Biden put their money where their mouths are."
According to Greenpeace:
As both nations face increased threats from the climate crisis, leaders from the U.S. and Mexico continue to incentivize the fossil fuel industry to ramp up oil and gas production in the Permian Basin and greenlight polluting fossil fuel infrastructure projects that will lock us into decades of emissions. From drilling and refining operations in Texas, to pipelines carrying Permian oil and gas through Mexico, the fossil fuel industry jeopardizes the health and safety of communities at each stage of the fossil fuel production process.
Last year, the U.S. became the world's top exporter of liquefied natural gas. "Around 70% of Mexico's natural gas supply is being met by U.S. pipeline imports," Greenpeace noted. "This is not what climate leadership looks like."
"From drought and record heatwaves to stronger, more frequent storms and flooding, we are living in a climate emergency."
Prior to last November's COP27 climate conference—which ended, like the 26 meetings before it, with no blueprint for rapidly cutting off planet-wrecking fossil fuels—the United Nations published reports warning that due to woefully inadequate emissions reductions targets and policies, there is "no credible path to 1.5°C in place," and only "urgent system-wide transformation" can prevent a cataclysmic temperature rise of nearly 3°C by 2100.
According to the latest data, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—the three main heat-trapping gases pushing temperatures upward—reached an all-time high in 2021, and greenhouse gas emissions only continued to climb in 2022.
Despite ample evidence that new fossil fuel projects will worsen deadly climate chaos, oil and gas corporations—supported by trillions of dollars in public subsidies each year—are still planning to expand dirty energy production in the coming years, including in the Permian Basin.
"The oil and gas industry has lit a fuse on the Permian Basin carbon bomb that threatens to blow up any hope of a livable future," John Noel, senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace USA, said Tuesday. "The technology to address the climate crisis already exists. It's time for Presidents Biden and López Obrador to commit to ending the exploitation and destruction of our communities at the hands of the oil and gas industry."
"From drought and record heatwaves to stronger, more frequent storms and flooding, we are living in a climate emergency," Noel added. "Last year, President Biden said that he will treat it as such. It's time for him to make good on those words by kickstarting a fossil fuel phaseout and declaring a climate emergency."
Greenpeace's intervention came as Biden and López Obrador prepared to engage in bilateral talks as part of the so-called "Tres Amigos" summit in Mexico City, which also features Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
In the lead-up to the meeting, more than 100 progressive advocacy groups from around North America urged the continent's heads of government to cooperate on mitigating the climate crisis, ensuring the just treatment of migrants, and reducing gun violence.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Massive Demonstration of Support for Lopez Obrador in Mexico City
AMLO was elected in 2018 and heralded as the Bernie Sanders of Mexico.
Nov 27, 2022
Hundreds of thousands marched with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Sunday in a massive demonstration through Mexico City to show their support for Lopez Obrador.
The march is celebrating the "transformation of Mexico" four years into his six-year term. Lopez Obrador, known by his initials AMLO was elected in 2018 and heralded as the Bernie Sanders of Mexico.
Reuters reported:
"The president is not alone," read a placard at the rally, while others vowed support for the government's controversial electoral reform plan.
"I like the way AMLO governs, always doing everything for the most vulnerable," said Alma Perez, a 35-year-old teacher who traveled from the southern state of Guerrero to join the march.
Lopez Obrador "has done what no other president has done for the poor," said Ramon Suarez, a 33-year-old electrician.
Mariachi bands entertained the president's supporters, who arrived on buses from around the country, many wearing purple, the color of his Morena party.
Lopez Obrador, who enjoys an approval rating of nearly 60 percent, owes much of his popularity to his social welfare programs aimed at helping the elderly and disadvantaged Mexicans.
Mexican presidents are barred from serving more than one term, and Lopez Obrador has ruled out trying to change the constitution to stay in office.
Even so, he is keen to see his Morena party hold onto power after he stands aside.
Three of Lopez Obrador's allies and potential successors -- Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard and Interior Minister Adan Augusto Lopez -- accompanied him at the rally.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Biden's Disastrous Choice to Exclude Nations From Summit of the Americas
U.S. neighbors say the president's reported "democracy vs. autocracy" invite list is a no-go and are willing to forgo the whole thing.
May 20, 2022
Last week, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador declared that he will boycott this year's Summit of the Americas, scheduled to take place June 6-10 in Los Angeles, if the Biden administration fails to invite the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
Washington's position on the Summit is hypocritical, inconsistent, and ultimately undermines an already-faltering U.S. position in the Americas.
While no final decision has yet been announced, several U.S. officials have indicated recently that the questionable human rights records and authoritarian governance of each of these countries disqualify them from attendance, a position that has raised hackles throughout the hemisphere.
Indeed, Lopez Obrador is not the only leader in the hemisphere who may not show up unless Washington extends invitations to all three countries. Last week, Bolivia's president, Luis Arce, tweeted a similar intention, while several Caribbean leaders have suggested that at least some if not all members of CARICOM, which consists of 15 English-speaking Caribbean member-countries and five associate members, may decide to stay home. The newly elected president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, has also suggested she won't go if the three nations' leaders are not invited.
These threats suggest that the first Summit to be hosted by the United States since its inaugural session in Miami in 1994 is not only setting up the Biden administration for a serious diplomatic embarrassment, but also for a major missed opportunity to focus attention on the growing strategic importance of its hemispheric neighbors. Washington needs the support of its regional partners to tackle critical issues, notably illegal migration, the drug trade, climate change, and growing Chinese influence in the Americas. The Summit itself is not solely to promote U.S. interests, but to promote the interests of all the countries in the Americas.
In a region where the United States is quickly losing influence and partner nations perceive U.S. disinterest, the Biden administration will lose political capital if it allows its growing tendency to divide the world into "democratic" friends and "authoritarian" states to dictate the invitation list for a forum that is much larger than Washington's professed policy objectives, however laudable they may be. A summit with critical partners missing would also deliver a huge blow to Biden's attempts to find solutions to U.S. domestic problems that range from border security to immigration flows to the rise in oil and gas prices.
Moreover, Washington's position on the Summit is hypocritical, inconsistent, and ultimately undermines an already-faltering U.S. position in the Americas.
The United States has championed human rights and democracy promotion around the world, but those efforts have been uneven in the Americas, to say the least. From Mexico through Argentina, the United States practiced a policy of backing--sometimes even installing--politically violent, even genocidal dictators and local elites who supported Washington's anti-communist policies, both before and during the Cold War. In Latin America, the United States has a far longer track record of supporting human rights violators than of advocating for the masses whose rights were violated. The special irony of excluding Cuba and Nicaragua from this year's Summit is that Washington went to great lengths during the Cold War, including providing critical support to armed insurgencies and imposing severe economic sanctions, to destabilize and eventually overthrow leftist governments in both countries, thus infusing their successor leaders with understandable skepticism about Washington's insistence that their exclusion reflects Washington's dedication to democracy and human rights throughout the hemisphere.
On top of this, the case of Venezuela presents the United States with a dilemma. If the United States invites Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, whom it recognizes as the legitimate president of the country, the Caribbean states, who have never recognized Guaido as Venezuela's president, are more likely to boycott. Indeed, Washington is increasingly isolated by its continued loyalty to Guaido whose years-long efforts to unite the opposition against President Nicolas Maduro have come to naught. Even the European Union, which initially recognized Guaido as president after his election as president of the National Assembly, has reduced his status to one of privileged interlocutor" in an implicit acknowledgement of the abject failure of Washington's de facto "regime change" policy.
Though White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who just stepped down this week, and State Department spokesman Ned Price indicated that the discussion of attendance remains hypothetical, even at this very late stage--no invitations have yet been issued--the growing hemispheric contretemps over who gets an invitation seems unlikely to end well. Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, wrote in Foreign Policy magazine that without a significant change in U.S. posturing, this year's summit could be seen as "a gravestone on U.S. influence in the region."
The Summit, which was initiated by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, is held every three years in a different country and was initially intended to help foster closer hemispheric cooperation around issues including democracy and shared economic and related problems. It was also intended to boost U.S. public and business interest in the country's southern neighbors. But levels of U.S. interest in the forum have been inconsistent, especially in recent years.
In an unprecedented move, President Donald Trump skipped the eighth summit held in Lima, Peru in 2018, sending Vice President Mike Pence in his place. Both Maduro and Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua's increasingly authoritarian president, attended the 2018 Summit. After U.S. President Barack Obama normalized relations with Havana in 2014, Cuba was invited and participated in both the 2015 and 2018 Summits. Trump's absence in 2018 merely served to highlight the increasing irrelevance and decreasing influence of the United States in the region and the faltering inter-American system.
Things have not much improved under Biden, in major part due to domestic political considerations and partisan politics. The confirmation of key ambassadorships in the Americas has been delayed in Congress for months due to holds put on confirmations by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz for unrelated reasons having to do with his opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. It was only just announced that Frank Mora, Biden's nominee as U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, would be confirmed later this week, less than three weeks before the summit.
Domestic political bickering has also shaped the position the White House finds itself in with Cuba. Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, a Cuban-American Democrat who also chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, has long opposed normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations. In an evenly split Senate, Menendez's support is viewed by the White House as critical to a wide range of foreign policy issues, which gives him enormous leverage on the policies he cares most about. Although the administration this week moved more decisively to ease Trump-era sanctions against Havana despite strong objections by Menendez, whether it can bring itself to invite Cuba to the Summit remains up in the air.
Until the 2015 Summit where Obama met with then-President Raul Castro, an encounter that helped lay the groundwork for Obama's historic trip to Havana a year later, the question of Cuba's participation in the Summit, as well as other hemispheric venues, served as a perennial source of friction between the United States and most of the rest of the hemisphere. But Trump's reversal of Obama's opening to the Caribbean island--and Biden's delays in fully restoring relations - have effectively thrust the issue back onto the hemispheric agenda in ways that are likely to negatively affect Washington's relationships, particularly if, as polls currently predict, Luis Inacio Lula de Silva, is returned to the Brazilian presidency in elections later this year.
With incoming president Biden declaring "America is back," one might have expected swift policy changes in the Americas, but the president's initiatives have so far proved to be more rhetoric than reality.
On the campaign trail, Biden condemned Trump's inhumane policies toward migrants, promising major changes if elected. Ultimately, President Biden has inherited the regional migration problem in his own right, with Vice President Kamala Harris, the point person in the administration's Central America "root causes" strategy, famously telling Guatemalans, "do not come" during her June 2021 visit to Central America. Despite increased attention on migration from Central America, Cuba and elsewhere, the issue--and the perception in the region that Washington, even under Democrats, remains hostile to desperate migrants--continues to rankle relations between the U.S. and Latin America.
Indeed, with U.S. attention hyper-focused on its own priorities--namely migration, drug trafficking, and China--its regional partners are less inclined to work with a northern giant they see as selfish, arrogant, and hubristic. The question is, can the United States momentarily put aside its domestic fixations and great power concerns for the greater good of the hemisphere?
U.S. re-engagement with its partners in the region is long overdue. It is not that the United States should not hold countries accountable for their human rights records. It's that making clean human rights records and democratic governance preconditions for being invited to a summit designed to tackle the hemisphere's immense challenges is bad practice, not to say historically inconsistent and hypocritical.
The absence of Presidents Lopez Obrador, Castro, and Arce, and the leaders of other regional partners would be keenly felt and damaging to the forum in future years. It would present China with new opportunities to assert its own growing influence. There is still time for the United States to create a relevant summit and promote successful partnerships in all the Americas, but it is running out.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More Stories
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy