World Politics Review | Accountability for Mexico’s Ayotzinapa Massacre Won’t Come Easy

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On Aug. 18, nearly eight years after 43 students from a teacher’s college in the rural town of Ayotzinapa disappeared, a truth commission set up by the government of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador released a sprawling report that confirmed what many had long argued: The state was involved. The report is a step forward for victims’ families and others who had pushed to keep the case alive, despite efforts to bury it by the administration of former President Enrique Pena Nieto. But whether it will result in accountability remains to be seen.

The case dates back to September 2014, when the group went missing in the southern state of Guerrero. In the months that followed, Jesus Murillo Karam, the attorney general at the time, delivered the official version of events, dubbed the “historic truth”: The 43 students commandeered buses to attend a protest when local police detained them and turned them over to members of the Guerreros Unidos criminal group. The gang supposedly mistook them for rivals, killed them and incinerated their bodies in a garbage dump before tossing their remains into a river. Arrests were made. Case closed.

Except it wasn’t. Instead, Ayotzinapa—as it is known—became an open wound for Mexico and a turning point in what ended up being the scandal-ridden presidency of Pena Nieto. Independent investigators and journalists poked holes in the official version and uncovered the military’s involvement in surveillance and alterations made at the scene of the crime. Detained gang members and police officers were released due to mishandled evidence or signs of torture. Forensic evidence indicated that all the victims could not have been cremated together in the dump. Throughout it all, the students’ family members demanded to know what happened to their loved ones as protesters regularly organized under the rallying cry: “The state did it.”

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World Politics Review | The Real Winner of Mexico's Midterm Elections Wasn't on the Ballot

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Mexico’s June 6 midterm elections were widely framed as a referendum on President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s statist makeover of the country’s institutions. In the hours after polls closed, headlines pointed to a defeat for the president’s party, Morena. But despite its losses in the lower house of Congress, the results had a number of bright spots for Morena and for AMLO, as Lopez Obrador is popularly known.

On the other hand, there was one clear winner that wasn’t even on the ballot: the country’s electoral authority, the Instituto Nacional Electoral, or INE, which overcame significant challenges to successfully oversee the biggest election in the country’s history.

Due to a recent political reform that led to a realignment of electoral calendars, some 20,000 local municipal positions were up for grabs across the country, as well as all 500 seats in the lower house of Congress. Heading into the election, Morena held a slim majority there with 256 seats; with its coalition partners, it had the two-thirds supermajority needed to amend the constitution. The allocation of seats is determined by a combination of direct and proportional representation, and the final make-up of the new Congress won’t be determined until August, but Morena is projected to lose close to 60 seats…

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World Politics Review | "Don’t We Deserve More?" Mexico’s Spike in Femicides Sparks a Women’s Uprising

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A women’s rights march in Mexico City. (Photo by C. Zissis)

A women’s rights march in Mexico City. (Photo by C. Zissis)

MEXICO CITY—One Saturday night last month, Bianca Alejandrina Lorenzena left her home in Cancun and never came back.

Two days later, on Nov. 9, protesters took to the city’s streets to demand justice for her death. Authorities had found the body of the 20-year-old Lorenzana, who was known by her nickname, Alexis, dismembered and wrapped in plastic bags. Her brutal slaying was the spark for the protest, but activists also demanded a response to a spate of recent femicides—the killing of women and girls for their gender—in the state of Quintana Roo, of which Cancun is the capital. The state is part of a dire national trend: Government statistics show that an average of 10 women are murdered each day in Mexico, and femicides have jumped by 137 percent over the past five years.

The protest in Cancun started out peacefully, but it took a dark turn when demonstrators tried to storm city hall and municipal police used live ammunition to disperse the crowd. Two journalists sustained bullet wounds, and protesters posted footage online of a panicked stampede as people fled the gunfire. The message was stunning: Law enforcement officers, who are meant to protect women from violence, had instead used lethal force against them.

The resulting outcry eventually led to the firing of the city’s police chief and the resignation of the state’s security minister, but that night, officials ranging from Cancun’s mayor to Quintana Roo’s governor took turns denying they had given the order to shoot, raising questions about who was in control of local police forces. The initial lack of accountability was a reminder of the rampant impunity in Mexico, where, from 2015 to 2018, only 7 percent of crimes against women were even investigated.

Read the full article at World Politics Review.

World Politics Review | Will AMLO’s Popularity in Mexico Survive COVID-19?

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MEXICO CITY—In mid-March, as governments around the world were imposing lockdowns and other restrictions to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was upbeat. He waved off “this idea that you can’t hug” as a result of the virus. “You have to hug each other,” he insisted. “Nothing will happen.” At a press conference on March 18, he pulled out his wallet to show off the religious images, four-leaf clover and $2 bill he carries for good luck—and as protection, he claimed, from COVID-19. A few days later, he encouraged people to keep going out to restaurants with their families.

But by the end of the month, he had reversed his stance. AMLO, as the president is widely known in Mexico, released a video on March 28 encouraging people to stay home, flatten the curve and avoid unnecessary trips to hospitals. He curtailed his rigorous travel schedule, ending the weekend trips he took on commercial flights to visit villages where he shook supporters’ hands and hugged children. On March 30, the government declared a national health emergency. ...

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World Politics Review | Trump's Trade Threats Have Pushed Mexico and China Closer Together

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World Politics Review | Trump's Trade Threats Have Pushed Mexico and China Closer Together

With talks to renegotiate NAFTA deadlocked this week over the hard-line positions of the Trump administration, Mexico was again left pondering the fate of its biggest trade relationship. Negotiations over the trade deal will now extend into next year, heightening both the economic uncertainty and Mexico’s desire to branch out, as countries like China look to expand their stake in the Mexican economy. In an email interview, Carin Zissis, editor-in-chief of AS/COA Online, the website of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, discusses the evolving nature of Mexico’s ties with China, how a change in NAFTA could affect them, and why Mexico is looking to wean itself off the U.S. market. 

WPR: What is the nature of Mexico and China’s political and trade relations, and how have they changed in recent years? What impact has the Trump presidency had?

Carin Zissis: Looking back at the recent history of China-Mexico ties, the two countries have been rivals—particularly when it comes to trade. In 2001, when China sought the unanimous vote to gain accession to the World Trade Organization, or WTO, Mexico was Beijing’s last obstacle. In September of that year, China and Mexico worked out a bilateral deal that paved the way for Beijing to win its WTO membership, but also allowed Mexico a six-year grace period, later extended to 2011, to maintain countervailing duties on hundreds of Chinese products. 

A major reason for Mexico’s hesitation about China joining the WTO came down to the fact that the two countries compete as exporters. There is evidence that Mexican concerns were well-founded. In the 16 years since it joined the WTO, China has replaced Mexico as America’s second-largest trading partner. At the same time, Mexico developed a gaping trade deficitwith China to the tune of about $65 billion in 2015, while receiving a fraction of its total foreign direct investment from the Asian powerhouse.

But now they share something in common: Both are being attacked by the Trump administration over trade deficits and as part of Donald Trump’s “America First” policy. Still, well before Trump began repeatedly hurling abuse at the southern neighbor, Mexico was already showing interest in boosting ties with China....

Read the full text of the article at World Politics Review or via AS/COA Online. 

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World Politics Review | Fear of the Unknown as Mexico Awaits the Trump Era

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Summary: On the morning after the U.S. election, the front pages of Mexican dailies responded to Donald Trump’s win with shock, and those fears aren’t unfounded. While it’s uncertain whether Trump will make good on his campaign promises, Mexico—and the U.S.—should brace themselves for the economic fallout.

MEXICO CITY — On the morning after the U.S. election, the front pages of Mexican dailies responded to Donald Trump’s win with shock. Given that Mexico found itself in Trump’s crosshairs throughout the race, Mexicans’ fears aren’t unfounded. But the U.S. president-elect might not be able to make good on every threat he made on the campaign trail. 

Consider the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. Trump will face plenty of challenges to building the infamous wall that was a centerpiece of his candidacy. First off, physical obstacles abound, including the Algodones Sand Dunes in southern California; the Coronado National Forest in Arizona and New Mexico, home to 9,000-foot mountains; and, not least, the Rio Grande. Next are the legal barriers: Roughly two-thirds of the border area is private- or state-owned. Then there’s the price tag, which could be as high as $25 billion, and which the Mexican government says it won’t cover, despite Trump’s campaign assertions that he would go so far as to block remittances unless it does. That’s no small threat. Mexican immigrants sent over $20 billion home in the first nine months of 2016 alone. 

Read the full text of the article at World Politics Review or via AS/COA Online. 

World Politics Review | The Trump Effect: Why Mexico's Image Problem Spells Trouble for the U.S.

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Summary: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has derided Mexico and Mexicans since his campaign began. His proposals are unfeasible and ignore the reality of robust and vital bilateral ties. For its part, Mexico has challenges that undermine its international image, but that's not the whole picture. 

During a June 30 campaign stop in New Hampshire, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump pointed to a plane flying overhead and quipped that it could be a Mexican aircraft “getting ready to attack.”

It’s not a small thing for the potential future U.S. president to casually suggest that neighboring Mexico is planning to launch an assault, given the close historical, security and commercial ties between the two countries. A third of U.S. territory used to belong to Mexico. Americans travel to Mexico more than any other foreign destination, and over twice as much as they do to Canada. Bilateral trade has hit more than $1.4 billion a day. The 2,000-mile border between the two is the world’s busiest, with 350 million people crossing—legally—each year. Even with that volume of people, there has not been one documented case of a terrorist getting into the United States from Mexico...

Read the full text of the essay at World Politics Review or via AS/COA Online.